


take my hand (so i know you're the real thing)

by sarsaparillia



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, F/F, F/M, Kiss My Ass Bioware, Templar Alistair
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 97,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6990040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsaparillia/pseuds/sarsaparillia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a new templar in Lothering.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. gold in the wreckage

—

.

.

.

.

.

There is a new templar in Lothering.

This is not something to be remarked upon; Lothering is a very small village for all that it is the only true rest stop between Denerim and Redcliffe. The Chantry here is much the same, a waystation for lay sisters and young templars alike on their way to bigger and better places, and the faces change all the time. New templars are not even a curiosity to most, features oft hidden behind their helmets, voices a tinny hollow _ping_.

Regardless, Bethany Hawke knows them all.

She knows them all, every one. Knows their faces, knows their families, knows the banked violence they all carry in their eyes, the stiff shoulders, the fanatic _devotion_. She knows them. She does. Sunday morning mass after Marian and Carver have left is always a difficult thing, and Beth swallows hard as she ducks down behind the pew. They can't just _not_ go; someone would think that something was wrong, and then they'd ask questions, and Bethany… Bethany isn't very good, at questions.

Questions make everything so, so much worse.

And so it goes: sitting in the pews with her head bowed, the Chant rises all around her. It sings along her bones, twining harmonies cresting towards the ceiling and dancing with dust motes all aglow with the sunlight in through the stained windows. She mouths along, more wind than sound, the words a combination of lyrium and lead. Her mother is a silent, somber presence at her side.

(Some days, Beth thinks that her mother's faith in the Maker died along with her father, buried beneath an unmarked grave on the edge of town. Some days, Beth thinks her own faith did, too. Faith is so hard, when your whole life you've been told that your freedom is an offense against the Maker. Guilt sticks to the insides of her ribs and churns, _churns_. Some days, she wonders if it wouldn't have been better that she'd never been born.)

But there is Sister Leliana and her stories, and Mother Nita's gentle grace, and the Chant, always the Chant, floating around them and hovering soft as feathers. Perhaps there are worse things than broken faith, but Beth can't name them. An apostate must believe, but they must never be caught. They must never, never be caught.

And there is a new templar in Lothering.

She can see him out of the corner of her eye. He shifts uncomfortably, the slow roll of a body unused to plate armour, all wrong and jerky instead—it's how she can tell he's new, no one used to the armour moves like that, it's too easy to get caught in the skirt—and his face is hidden behind the helmet. He doesn't _watch_ like the others do, either.

She thinks, a little surprised, that he might actually be whispering along.

Tamping down the surprise is as second nature as anything, these days. Carver and Marian have been gone for a week, headed down south to fight the growing darkspawn horde. Beth prays for them both every night before she sleeps: _please let my siblings come home safe. Please let us stay together. Please, Maker, please, I don't think I will survive without them. I don't think I_ _ **can**_. It's an ugly prayer, a selfish prayer, but she thinks that the maker probably understands selfishness. He turned away from His children for it; surprise at humanity's incredible capability for selfishness is likely not in His repertoire.

Without her siblings, Beth only has one line of defense. It crackles inside of her, a green-edged blue _power_ that sings through her veins, familiar and tempting and so, so dangerous. She knows that if anyone finds out, the quiet existence her family has spent a decade building will end.

Whispering the words to the Chant or not, a new templar is still a new templar. It is still another person to stay away from. It is still another threat.

Beth stares down at her hands folded neatly in her lap, and doesn't look up until the service is over.

—

His name is Alistair.

He is a year her elder, maybe two, and Beth thinks very secretly that he is not a very good templar. He's… _kind_ , that's the word. _Kind_ , in a world where kindness has never been anything but a sucker's game. He shouldn't be kind. He _shouldn't_.

But there it is: Lothering's new templar is kind.

Bethany catches him with sweets in his hands after services, tucking them away in the children's palms when their parents aren't looking, and she has to dip her head so that she doesn't catch his eye and accidentally smile at him. That would attract his attention, and that would be bad. And she knows that, and that's the only reason she doesn't raise her head to grin at him when the _clang_ of gauntlet against chest plate rings through the Chantry. Lothering's Knight-Captain isn't very forgiving of his templars stepping out of line.

The prayer falls from Bethany's lips without her express permission. She doesn't _want_ his attention, but she can't help that she chances a glance up. It's a bad idea; of course it is, Maker knows that Marian has spent enough time drilling it into her head. A new templar only means trouble, and she should _know_ better. One of these days, this stupid fascination is going to get her killed.

(It doesn't stop her, though. Beth swallows, and carefully doesn't think of mana-drain cuffs.)

In the dusty light of the sun through the Chantry's stained-glass windows, it's easy to stare at him out of the corner of her eye. He's got a gauntleted hand up on the back of his neck, and while the helmet does its level best to obscure his face, there's no hiding the shifting guilt in his posture. The discomfort of the gesture makes her think—makes her _think_ —

Beth squashes that thought down. It doesn't make her think anything. It doesn't make her think of anything at all.

The days go by, the sun baking the earth cracked and brown. Heat rises from the dry ground, but the inside of the Chantry is a cool quiet benediction. Bethany sits next to her mother, trying not to dream of a Winter's Grasp strong enough to encase the whole world in a block of ice. Marian and Carver have been gone a month, and she misses them both so much that it aches. She misses her sister's perpetual smirk. She misses her brother's hulking scowl. The dark sticky place behind her sternum burns with the lack of them like a knife between the ribs, but it's not enough. It never is.

The days go by, and her siblings don't come home, and Bethany almost speaks to Alistair three times.

Once: he's rubbing the back of his neck. Dog sits peaceably at her heels, and Beth listens as Sister Leliana tells a wicked Orlesian folktale that has the children screeching with laughter. The Knight-Captain frowns at them, looks like he's about to come over to tell them off for being so irreverent in the Chantry. Alistair steps in between to waylay the man, and she knows, she _knows_ , that he's trying to give them a few more minutes.

Twice: guarding the Chantry doors. Bethany lowers her head so that she doesn't meet his eyes. The comforting weight of her staff is missing. Her tongue is lead. She can feel his gaze burning through her spine, and she wonders if magic has a taste. If it does, can he taste it? Can he feel it churning inside of her?

Three times: Mother Nita asks for help sweeping out the Chantry, long fragrant grasses tucked in her arms to scatter along the floor. From far away, the Chant rises; even from this distance, Sister Leliana's voice is unmistakeable. Bethany stands in the pews, eyes closed, swaying a little back and forth. She doesn't notice at all when he comes up to stand beside her. She doesn't notice at all he's there until he coughs, _coughs_ , and her eyes snap open. She pulls in a sharp breath, chances a glance at him, helmeted face and all—oh, Maker, _no_ , if he says anything she'll have to _reply_ —but before anything happens, the Knight-Captain calls his name. He turns.

And Bethany—Bethany runs.

That night, she presses her face into her pillow, and thinks of her father. She thinks of her father and her father's tales of the Gallows, the slow way he died coughing, _coughing_. Her mother breathes in the next room, the slow shallow breathes of deep sleep. Bethany thinks of all that her mother gave up, a home and a family and a _title_ ; there's a whole world of things that Leandra Hawke left behind to build herself something new.

And for her to sacrifice it all for a _boy_ …

 _No_ , Bethany thinks, _I can't_.

Besides.

Marian would _kill_ her.

And so she lets the Fade take her, swallows down the disappointment, and resolves to keep herself to herself, if only for her mother's sake. There's only so much a person can lose before they lose themselves, and Bethany doesn't know how much more her mother can _take_.

But of course, nothing ever goes the way a person wants it to. Bethany knows this, but she didn't expect that it would happen so _soon_.

Today's service is no different. The Chantry is quiet, the echoes of Mother Nita's sermon long since faded, and most of the congregation has left. Even the gaunt-faced refugees have gone back to their tents in the fields. More flood in every day, but the darkspawn haven't made it past the King's army at Ostagar, and Beth doesn't worry only because she knows that Carver and Marian are as close to unkillable as unkillable gets. She doesn't think about what they'd say, her twin and her older sister, if they knew what she was doing. _A templar, Bethany? Really?_

Once, twice, three times she's had words stuck in her throat when Alistair's not-so-secretly been a not-very-good templar. She counts them on her fingers, all the ways he breaks the rules. The Chantry seems to ring with them.

So, four: he takes the stupid helmet off.

Beneath the metal is a face with a sharp nose and a sandy fringe, a crookedly nervous kind of grin. A nice face. He's going to get in trouble for taking the helmet off, but he's knelt down to pet Dog, and when he looks up at her for permission, she thinks all the air goes out of her lungs. His eyes are the colour of aged Chasind mead, the exact same kind her father used to love.

 _Oh_ , Bethany thinks. _Oh_.

(It figures that the fourth time isn't _almost_. It figures that the fourth time is the one she can't close her mouth, can't be softer, sweeter, safer; it _figures_ that after she'd made the choice to stop, to keep her head down and mercilessly choke off the urge to smile at him, he'd go and make the decision for her.)

"I like dogs," he's saying, rubbing Dog behind the ears. Dog, the _traitor_ , yips happily and pushes his head into Alistair's hands. "Sorry about before."

"It's fine," Bethany says, very softly. She has to fight with her hands to keep them from flexing. Normal girls don't _do_ that, she reminds herself. Be normal, be normal. "His name's Dog. I know, _so_ creative, but my sister named him. I think she thinks it's funny."

"I didn't know you had a sister," he says. "She doesn't come to services?"

Bethany laughs a little tremulously. Marian, in a Chantry? Maker, no, she thinks her sister would burst into flame. But she doesn't _say_ that, just shakes her head and tries to keep the amusement out of her voice. It's a losing battle. "She's gone to Ostagar to fight the darkspawn. My brother, too."

"But not you?" he asks, looking up at her sharply. The platemail _clinks_ with the movement.

She shrugs, a helpless little smile working its way across her face as she tucks dark curls behind her ear. It's a nervous habit, the hair-tucking, but she can't _stop_. "Not me. I'm no soldier."

He looks at her for another moment. "What are you, then?"

"A girl," Bethany says. There's a smile threatening, though she has no idea what. "What else is there?"

"Lots of things," he says. There's a wicked little twinkle in his eyes, mischievousness made tangible. "Does this girl have a name?"

"She might," Bethany says, playing along. He can't be all bad—Dog rumbles contentedly, and whatever else the silly creature may be, he's got a very good sense about people. "She'll trade you for it. Name for a name?"

"Alistair," he says. "Your turn."

"I already gave you Dog's. Doesn't that count?"

He chokes on a laugh, shoulders shaking. "I'm pretty sure the Maker would smite me if I called you anything but your name."

"You don't even _know_ my name!"

"I'd like to."

Beth's cheeks go hot. She looks down at her hands folded in her lap, and has absolutely no idea what's happening here. She is in _so much trouble_. "It's Bethany," she says. "Bethany Hawke."

"Could I interest you in a walk, Miss Hawke?"

"I'm sorry, Alistair, I can't. I need to go home," she says, and finds that she actually is sorry. It's been a long time she allowed herself the luxury of talking to someone. But—templar, and mage, and _things_. And she needs to go home. She always needs to go home. "My mother will be waiting, and she worries."

"Then can I—can I walk you? If you're not busy?" he stumbles over the words, flushing all the way to the tips of his ears. Oh, Maker, he's hopeless. _She's_ hopeless. They're _both_ hopeless, this is going to be a travesty.

And she should say no. Andraste's blood, but she should _really_ say _no_.

"I think I'd like that," Bethany says, instead, even though there's a voice in the back of her skull that sounds like Marian screaming obscenities. This is a bad idea, the worst idea, maybe, and she doesn't _care_. She's spent her whole life hiding the lightning in her veins, and he's a _templar_. It's just asking for trouble.

But she thinks of candy, and children, and that first day in the Chantry when he was whispering along to the Chant like he really _believed_. It's just a _walk_. What harm could it do?

When he offers her his arm, Bethany smiles so shyly and takes it.

—

It doesn't stay just a walk.

Of course it doesn't. This—whatever _this_ is—has no business staying just a walk. It's too complicated, too real, and it evolves like this:

Alistair walks her home. He walks her home and walks her home and walks her home, learns to whistle for Dog, teaches her how to braid flowers into her hair. And they talk. They talk about everything, her family and his templars, politics and dreams and favourite colours. He likes horses, she finds out, and sometimes he says things about himself that make all her insides squeeze. There are things that freeze them both up, but of course there are. Bethany can't explain about her father or where they came from. Alistair goes very quiet when his childhood comes up. It's an exercise in masochism, a dance where no one knows the steps but one toe out of line tips them back into the fire. He touches her elbow. Bethany has to duck her head to hide the blush.

It's something to live for, day by day.

But Lothering has bigger problems. Outside of the little bubble of Bethany's quiet existence, the refugees from the south flood in, more every day. They're all gaunt-faced and empty-eyed, the hollows of their cheeks more pronounced than ever. The field of tents goes on forever.

It's not so bad. The Chantry has plenty of food stored up. Bethany finds herself helping Sister Leliana and Sister Elaine distributing soup and rice, mid-morning sun sinking hot into her curls. The colour seems to have gone out of the world, and everything is baked brown and dead.

And then the sickness comes.

Really, she shouldn't be so surprised. There's already a Blight; of _course_ there's going to be something contagious on top of it. That's the way things work, misery on misery on even more misery. They're running out of elfroot and spindelweed, and Bethany would go on her own because she'd be alright, but… well. _Templars_.

"Will you come with me?" she asks, after service, fiddling with the edge of her scarf. It was Marian's, once, and the arterial crimson of it stands out starkly against her skin. It's the only thing she owns that still has any colour left. There's something fitting about that, she thinks. "Elder Miriam needs herbs, and there's no one else willing to go."

"You really have to ask?" Alistair says. "Even the Knight-Commander can't get annoyed, I'm leaving for a good cause."

"For once," she teases, a smile splitting across her face.

"You're _always_ a good cause, I don't know what his problem is."

Bethany doesn't have anything to say to that (anything, at least, that won't get her in all kinds of trouble), and so she bobs her head. He probably still notes the bright red that suffuses her cheeks. Oh, well.

When they go, Bethany carries a basket and a visceral awareness of the space between them. The elfroot grows right along the treeline, the spindelweed tucked along the overflow off the creek where it puddles into wet pats of land. The sky sails cloudless above them, an unending stretch of blue domed around them. There's such a hush; the whole world's fallen silent, far enough away from the village that the sounds of everyday life have fallen away until there's nothing but the _crunch_ of boots against dry grass.

"Thank you for coming," Bethany says, voice very soft, hands full of elfroot leaves. They've made it all the way out to Dog's favourite tree, a big-trunked thing standing on the crest of a hill. She bends down to pick a few more of the herbs. They grow thickly here. "I know that you probably had better things to do today."

The sun shines slickly off Alistair's sword. There are bandits this far out, and it never hurts to be careful. He glances at her, expression creasing. "It's fine, Beth. I wanted to come."

Beth laughs, curls flying wildly as she shakes her head. "Well, _that's_ a lie. No one wants to go herb-picking, it's not a lot of excitement. Really, I should have just brought Dog."

"You'd leave me at the Knight-Captain's mercy? He'd have me scrubbing the scullery all day. Don't be cruel, Beth."

She smothers a giggle with her hand. "Maybe I _should_ have grabbed Dog, I'm sure the Chantry could use a good scrub—"

Alistair makes an offended noise, already in the middle of grumbling about just how unfair the Knight-Captain tends to be in his chore distribution. Bethany bends again, fingers snapping through the elfroot's tender stalks.

"I'm wounded, Bethany. _Wounded_."

"Oh, I'm _sure_ —" she looks up to find that he's stepped into her space, hovering right there. It's just habit to take a step back, a startled instinctive thing. The tree bark is rough against her back when she hits the solid trunk, but he still moves to close the distance between them. He's so _close_ , nose only a hairsbreadth away, and he's staring down at her with a tiny shadow of a grin on his face. Her lungs close up, and she can't get her breath back. If this is how it is for other people, she's surprised that other people don't just _implode_.

"Hi," he murmurs.

"Hi," Bethany whispers back. She can smell the crush of elfroot between them, oiled metal, clean skin.

"You're biting your lip, Bethany," Alistair says, reaches up to pull her lip free of her teeth. She has no idea when he got his gauntlets off, but he did. His thumb is warm, and lingers at the corner of her mouth.

"Sorry," she says, because she has no idea what else to say.

"I'm not the one being bitten," he says, and his lips twitch closer into a real smile. He's not very good at being serious, is Alistair, always too close to shaking into laughter to really be able to be a serious kind of person. Even when there are things that he can't—that he doesn't—even when the world is falling apart, he still doesn't know how to be grim.

(Andraste, she likes him _so much_.)

"I don't see how you would be, given that I'm the one doing the biting," Bethany tells him,

"Are you sure about that, Beth?"

"When would I be biting you, hm?"

"Think about it," he grins, slow and syrupy as molasses, and just about as dark. Alistair's voice has gone low, lower than she's ever heard it, and it sings a thrill up her spine.

" _Alistair_!"

His laughter is lost in the sound of wind through leaves and he bends to brush his nose along the line of her cheek, stubble a warm scrape against her jaw. It's not a kiss, not quite, but she thinks if either of them even an inch, it will be. His mouth presses into the corner of hers.

"Is this alright?" Alistair asks, very softly, into her skin.

"Yes," Bethany says. She doesn't know what to do with her hands, has to lay them against his chest plate for lack of anything else to hold onto. "I hate your armour. Are you going to kiss me now?"

"Bossy," he chuckles. He catches a fistful of her curls, tilts her head back to look her full in the face. His pupils are so wide, only a thin ring of honey-brown iris left, and the air leaves Bethany's lungs for the third time in as many minutes. The naked _want_ on his face wipes all other thought from her mind.

"You are going to get me in _so_ much trouble," she breathes, and stands up on her tiptoes to seal them together, arms around his neck, mouth against mouth.

They kiss like a forest fire. They kiss like the end of the world. They kiss until Bethany's lips go numb, and then they kiss some more, breathing against each other, hitched up and ground down and pressed close, so close. She can't stop touching him: shoulders and knuckles and throat, all the exposed skin she can get her hands on.

Maker, she really hates the stupid armour, and she has to hide her face in his neck to get her bearings back.

"Alright?" he asks, but it doesn't really sound like a question. More of a statement of fact, though who it's about is still a question.

"Are you?" she asks in reply, and when he snickers, she thinks that things are going to be fine. She lets him brush curls off her forehead, closes her eyes just a little, and pretends that the weightless feeling in her chest isn't entirely going to destroy them both.

"Good point," he says. "We managed to screw up plant-gathering. Elder Miriam is going to be so disappointed."

Beth looks down at her hands. They've crushed the elfroot into pulpy bits and pieces that aren't good for anything and dropped the rest, long leaves scattered everywhere. She and Alistair blink at each other for a moment, and then they both have the gall to burst into embarrassed laughter.

"Maker," someone says, but Bethany will never be able to tell quite who.

(Alistair kisses her bare shoulder like an afterthought, readjusts her scarf to hide the delicate bruises already purpling her collarbone. Forget Elder Miriam; if Bethany's _mother_ sees those marks, unmistakeable for anything but what they are, _disappointment_ will be the least of her worries. She chances a glance at Alistair's mouth, and decides she doesn't much care. Andraste, _so_ much trouble.)

"Walk me home?" Bethany asks, at last. The sun's already going down, and there's only so much time she can stretch these excursions out over. One of these days, her mother is going to decide that she's put herself in more than enough danger, and that will be the end of that. It's not something Beth is very much looking forwards to; she has little enough freedom as it is.

"We should probably get those herbs, first," Alistair says, a little wryly. He's looking down at her, and she colours under his regard. His gaze is very warm, and his eyes crinkle at the corners when he smiles.

"Probably," she hums her agreement, still trying to force the flush away. "Are we actually going to do that this time?"

"Depends," he says.

"On what?"

"My impulse control."

"You're _terrible_ ," Bethany says, laughing a little helplessly, because _honestly_. He is the worst templar she's ever met. She likes him _so much_.

"I never said I wasn't," Alistair says cheerfully. He catches her wrist to lace their fingers, a lattice of skin and bone. Bethany's magic prickles inside of her with the urge to shock him. In another life, she thinks it would make him laugh, and there's a very mad part of her that thinks he should laugh always. It's an urge that's going to get her killed.

(But really, what _isn't_ going to get her killed?)

And so they walk Lothering's fields to gather herbs, hand in hand. And then he walks her home because he's always walking her home and even though he doesn't kiss her at the door, it's a close thing. Instead, he swipes a thumb along her pulse, smiles his goodbye, goes _see you tomorrow_. Bethany's heart nearly beats its way right out her ribs.

She slips into the little house her father built, low-ceilinged and solid with flowerboxes beneath the windows, walks straight into the bedroom she's shared with her siblings for as long as she can remember, and lies face-down in her pillow smiling so hard her cheeks hurt.

It was such a good day, she thinks, still smiling.

But the day goes on and turns to evening, and lying around in bed isn't conducive to keeping the house running. Leandra is about as good a cook as Marian is, which is to say not at all, and so Bethany gets up, and goes to scrape something together. They're running low on everything again, vegetables and bread and meat. The cup that holds spare coppers is very light.

Where on _earth_ are her siblings?

There's a pot of thin soup on the fire, and there's someone at the door.

Three hard knocks, an open-palm slap, two hard again. It's a call and reply that she hasn't heard in a very long time; it was her father's system far more than it has ever been Beth's.

 _Oh_ , she thinks, swallows hard. _Oh_.

Someone needs healing.

Beth steels herself, draws in air. She thinks of the crinkle of Alistair's eyes before he'd kissed her and how she'd wanted to trace the lines of his face, the way he'd been so _close_ and all she'd wanted was for him to be _closer_ , wanted to climb inside his skin.

And he thinks she's _normal_.

Oh, Maker, he's going to hate her for this.

Bethany goes to get the door.

A woman in a ragged travelling cloak stands there, trembling. She's got her arms wrapped around a little body, and her eyes are wild in a starving face. There are starts and stops written all over her, and her face isn't one that Bethany knows. A refugee from the south.

"They say you're a healer," she says. It sounds like she's choking on it. Her hands skitter over the child like she can't touch him enough. He can't be older than six, downy hair soaked with sweat.

Bethany's heart clenches.

And yet… "I think you have the wrong house."

"He's sick," the woman says. "He's so sick, and there's nothing—no one can—please, Miss Hawke," the woman whispers brokenly, the sentence shattering into a hoarse sob. "Please. He's all I have left."

And Bethany doesn't hesitate anymore.

She doesn't know who gave her away, but half the village knows that her father had been the best healer from here to Kinloch Hold. She's not surprised they put two and two together; say what you like about Fereldens, they're a suspicious lot at the best of times, fiercely loyal and incredibly paranoid in equal measure, and this is no different.

"Get him on the table," she says, raises her voice to call, " _Mother_!"

Leandra sweeps in, takes one look at the refugee woman hovering by the door, the boy on the table, and her daughter in between them already rolling up her sleeves. "I'll get a cloth," she says, and then sweeps back out again. Bethany loves her mother very desperately in this moment.

"I'm not a very good healer," Beth tells the woman. "I'm not—my father was the healer. I only know a little."

"Anything is better than nothing," she says. Her eyes are blue. Her hair is blonde. Underneath the hood there is a sharply-pointed ear, and when she catches Bethany looking, she shrinks back. Oh, that would explain it, wouldn't it. Beth looks down at the little boy on her table, round-eared and struggling to breathe.

Andraste, she can't believe that this still _matters_ to people.

"I'll do whatever I can," Bethany says, gives the woman a tiny smile. It sounds like a promise.

Her mother comes back with a bowl of water and a cloth, and they begin.

With illness, it's always better to try the natural remedies, first. A pile of blankets, stoke the fire: they're going to smother the fever in its own heat to help burn the sickness out. Elfroot leaves boiled and mixed with a little honey for the cough; vinegar and fibrous blood lotus tubers to help him breathe; spindelweed seeds mixed with embrium to make a thick paste for his chest. They don't stop moving, a frenzy of limbs and intent and the sickening knowledge that even magic may not be enough; it's not a cure-all, and Bethany is not a spirit healer.

The moon rises and sinks, and finally, there's nothing else. Dawn peeks over the horizon pale grey. The colour has all leeched out of the world. The little boy's gone quiet, lips cracked, and every breath is a fight. The fever's not breaking.

Bethany's magic sings.

(Nothing else for it.)

She takes a single minute to center herself, and then she reaches for it.

Bethany's magic is a blue-green pool that gleams in her minds eye. It hangs suspended in her chest, just behind her heart; it's the deepest, most intrinsic part of her, and most days she can't stand that it exists at all. It's marked her different from the first day she was born, kept her sheltered and forced them to move more than once. There have been a lot of homes, and leaving them behind was always the hardest thing. They've stayed in Lothering in the longest, but that had more to do with Marian and her disappearing acts than anything else. Beth thinks that if her mother had her way, they would have left the day her father died. But they didn't, and now there's this: a growing Blight, a refugee woman who refuses to give her name, a sick little boy.

Her hand closes around a glowing skein of mana. The magic leaks out of her like water out of a broken jug.

There's a knock at the door.

Everyone in the room freezes. The boy's mother, eyes wide and shaking all over. Leandra, hands dipped into the bowl of water, still in the middle of wringing out the cloth. And Beth herself, flayed open from sternum to stomach, her darkest secret shimmering in the air around her. It paints the whole house in light glittering blue and green and white in turn, all damning.

 _Oh, Maker, please no_ , Bethany thinks. It can't already be time—

But it is. It is.

Alistair comes to walk her to the Chantry, most mornings. Bethany doesn't know when it started; she doesn't really have a date. She just knows that one day he showed up, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and had said, _well, I'm already walking you home. I might as well walk you there, too_.

At the time, her heart had strangled itself to death, and Bethany had smiled up at him like a sunrise, soft and shy and full of hope.

Now, it just feels like a death in the family.

He's standing in the doorway, gauntleted knuckles tight around the knob. That stupid armour, always getting in the way, the long skirt tangled around his knees. His face is white, and Beth is so, so sorry. For him. For her. For the both of them.

"Bethany?" and he seems to swallow the words.

"Alistair, it's not—it's not what it looks—" but that's a lie, it is a blatant _lie_ and she has to try again. He's staring at her, at the blue-green glow around her hands. Sweat sticks her curls to the back of her neck, and she draws in air thick as mud. The boy on the table moans like he's dying. He might be. Bethany decides that everything else can wait. "Alright, fine, it's exactly what it looks like, but he needs my help, and you can—you can be mad at me later, okay?"

He gawks at her for another minute, and there's a distant part of Bethany that expects a sword through the gut. He pressed her up against a tree, anchored her into the world mouth to mouth. So much for trust. The boy between them makes another pained sound. Maker, she hopes she's done enough, she doesn't know if he's is going to be fine on his own—

"What do you need me to do?" Alistair asks. He's pulling his gauntlets off. "What can I do, Beth?"

Her head spins a lazy circle. Marian is never going to forgive her for this. And Carver, _Maker_ , Carver is going to be a nightmare. All lost, because she couldn't keep her nose where it belonged. It's a little ironic, but it is what it is.

(Bethany wonders, far-away and dreamy, what her father would say.)

"I—hold him down," she says. "I have to burn the fever out."

The _clang_ of platemail against floor is loud in her ears, and then Alistair is there in nothing but a pair of soft thin breeches and a shirt full of holes. His arms come up to hold the boy's shoulders down, and doesn't flinch at the wet sucking rattle of his breath.

Beth manages a smile, though she doesn't know for who, and sinks back into the magic.

Time goes strange the way it always does when she heals. She's not very good at it; healing, that is. What she told the boy's mother wasn't a lie: she doesn't have half the aptitude for it that her father did, and it takes so much more energy for her than it ever did for him. Bethany's magic flickers like a flame in the wind, but she pours more of herself into it, forces the magic _out_ and _out_ and _out_. The illness has settled into the boy's lungs, and burning it out is an arduous process. She is a knife, she is a forest fire, she is a mage. She burns the infection out and burns it out and burns out, burns and burns and burns until there is nothing left.

She thinks she can hear her name being called from very far away.

"—eth. Bethany, come back, that's enough, you've done enough, come back, please come back—"

"Oh, hello, Alistair," she says. "I think I need to sit."

He catches her when she her knees give out and she collapses. The world swims in and out, but his face is all she can focus on. It's nice. A nice face. She's almost sorry that she can't hold it together long enough to try to explain.

He's saying something else, but there's nothing she can do. The Void gapes open, wide and hungry and reaching for her. The Fade waits.

Bethany sleeps.

—

Consciousness filters in slowly. The sun slats in through the window with the bright white-gold glow of early afternoon. All of Bethany's muscles protest, and something tells her that she'd be much better off closing her eyes and falling back asleep.

But her mouth tastes like death, and she's thirsty enough to drink the ocean. Bethany rubs sleep from her eyes, and forces herself to sit up.

Alistair is sitting at her side, staring at her.

"Good morning," Bethany says. She keeps her eyes down. What in the Maker's name is he doing here? Shouldn't he have already gone running back to the Chantry to round up the other templars? Or is he giving her a chance to leave?

Bethany knows the vows. _Thou shalt not suffer a maleficarum to live_. Healing doesn't make her maleficar, but it's close. She's an apostate, regardless, and he's bound by every holy law she's ever read to take her to the Circle.

(And maybe, maybe there is a secret, quiet part of Bethany that wants this. That wants the choice taken away; which it finally, finally has been. Marian can't make a fuss if Beth didn't turn herself in, and this was unavoidable. A life for a life. And Mother will be able to go back to Kirkwall, and Carver—well, Carver will be alright.)

"Water?" he asks, holding up a cup.

"Thank you," Bethany says, takes it from him. She's very careful not to touch his skin. Now that he knows…

"Not too fast," he says. Her grip trembles like she's about to pay him absolutely no mind, tilts her head back to swallow the water down. Alistair catches her, hands around hers, and sternly keeps her from gulping it all down.

When she's finished, she sets it down on the bedside table with a final-sound _clink_. Well, there's nothing else for it. They were going to have to have this conversation sooner or later; she'd known they were going to have to talk about it from the moment he curled his hand around her cheek.

But still. It's hard.

"Is my patient alright?" Bethany has to force herself to ask.

"Yes," Alistair says. The skin around his eyes has gone tight. "His mother took him back to the camp, and your mother gave them soup. He should be fine."

"Oh," she says. Her throat works all funny, still too dry and it _clicks_ while she searches for the right words to make this better. Probably, there aren't any. How do you make a lie about your whole life better? "That's good. I wasn't sure that I'd—done enough."

"You did enough. You're a mage," he says.

"Yes," Bethany says. There's no denying it, not now. She tugs at a stray thread on the quilt. Her mother would be so disappointed. "I am."

"Do you know how much magic you used? You crumpled and _passed out_ ," Alistair stresses, and he sounds more horrified about this than about anything else. She watches as he runs his hands over his face. There are lines to his expression that she doesn't remember being there before. She wants to wipe them away the hurt; he's been hurt enough. "You could have—that was dangerous, Bethany. You could have died!"

"What does it matter?" she asks.

"You _could have died_ ," he repeats. "What would your sister say? What would you _twin_ say?"

"That's not fair," Bethany says, flinching back into the pillow. "That's not—don't bring them into this. I had to, you know I did."

"Not like that, you didn't," Alistair retorts, too sharp even as he's trying not to be. Bethany knows that struggle, has held it between her teeth every time Marian and Carver come home bruised and broken and bleeding. Caring about someone is difficult. Caring about someone when they don't care about themselves is even more difficult.

Being on the other side of it isn't necessarily pleasant. She squirms a little, but it wasn't like she'd take it back even if she could. She'd done what she had to do, and she has, at least, the excuse of a life in her hands.

"What did you expect me to do? Turn them away? We tried everything else first, and none of it worked. The magic was my last resort!"

"No," Alistair says, hot frustration in the word. "No, but—not that, anything but that. You could have died!"

"Yes, I know. But what else is there?!"

"I don't know! I'm not a mage!"

"And I am, so trust me when I say that I didn't really have another choice!"

They both flinch at that, mostly because it's all true.

"Maker's breath, Beth, I almost lost you," he says, and his voice is so hollow and so low that she almost doesn't hear it. He's looking at her like he can't quite believe that she's sitting there, hands hovering just an inch away from hers. For a moment she studies them, the knobs and veins, the tight flex to them. A memory hits her: _normal girls don't do this, be normal, be normal_. Maybe he's thinking it, too. Be normal. Be normal.

Bethany has no idea what she's doing. She reaches over, and very carefully laces their fingers. Alistair starts, but then settles. Settles.

"I'm sorry," she says. It feels like a long time later.

"For what?" Alistair asks.

"For this," she says. She doesn't say: _for being a mage_ , even though that's what she means. She doesn't say: _for nearly dying_ , even though she means that, too. She doesn't say: _for lying_ , even though that's what she's sorriest about. Beth looks up at him, nose and mouth and eyes, tries to commit it all to memory. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he says. "What happens now?"

"You're supposed to take me to the Circle," she tries for humour, but it falls flat. It's hard to joke about spending the rest of your life locked up, it seems. The Gallows rise in her mind, endless white stone soaked in a thousand years of blood. Her father taught her well. "Apostate, remember?"

"No," he says, frowning.

"What do you mean, no?"

"I mean _no_ ," Alistair repeats. He brushes a sweat-soaked curl away from her face, the gentleness of the gesture at odds with the bad shake to his fingers. He hasn't let her other hand go, yet. "I'm not—no. I can't. I won't."

"Won't you get in trouble?"

"I dunno," he says, shrugging. "Probably."

"Alistair, I'm sor—"

"Beth," he says. "It's fine."

"It's not."

"It is," he says. He raises her hand, holds it like it's a breakable thing. Salt and skin; he touches his mouth to the pale blue veins on the inside of her wrist. It's not a kiss. It's something a lot more dangerous than that. Bethany can feel the flush all the way down to her collarbones, but he doesn't look away, and so neither does she. "I promise. It's fine. You're not going anywhere."

And he's not wrong: it _is_ fine.

Nothing changes. Bethany still goes to services at the Chantry, Sister Leliana still sings, and the Knight-Captain still scowls at Alistair three times a week. The days pass in blur, one day smearing into the next. The villagers send them pleased little glances when he walks her home, arms full of groceries; _a good match, Leandra must be pleased, do you think a spring wedding, may not be a wedding at all if the darkspawn have anything to say about it_ —

It's one of those days after service that Marian and Carver come home.

Alistair and Bethany are standing in the kitchen in afternoon-bright sunshine, when her sister comes tumbling through the door with blood streaked across her face like a wound. It's a Tuesday.

Alistair startles so badly he nearly falls over, but Bethany is used to Marian yelling her head off about everything and only jumps a little. Marian's eyes are a deadly bright flash, blue as blue can be, blue as ice, blue as the sky. "We need to go," she half-shouts, cheerful as anything to cover the urgency in the words. "We need to go _now_ , the darkspawn are coming, Bethy, get Mother, we have to go—!"

"Marian? What are you—?" Bethany gets out, but her sister cuts her off.

"You heard me. Darkspawn, Mother, Dog, chop chop. And who is this?" she asks, gaze turning to flint when it passes over Alistair. Bethany's sister takes in the templar armour, the sticky-up way that his hair sits after he's pulled the helmet off. She shifts, coiled muscles a smooth shift beneath her skin, and there are daggers in her palms.

Bethany swallows hard.

(This was not how she'd envisioned this conversation. Even Mother hadn't been this difficult, had only raised an eyebrow as she'd looked between them and then said _I hope you know what you're doing_. Alistair had helped with dinner that night. Leandra Hawke had watched as they moved around each other, and hadn't said a word. But of course Marian's a different story; this is _Marian_ they're talking about, and Bethany ought not have expected so much.)

"Alistair," he says. His hand finds Bethany's, but still he steps forwards a little to meet her sister's gaze squarely. It's brave, and also insane. Marian Hawke does not cut an undaunting figure. She looks like a knife-cut, all sharp edges and killer's eyes even when she smiles.

And she's not smiling right now. "Was I talking to you?" Marian asks, crooks an eyebrow at him.

"You were talking _about_ me," he says easily. "Ought to count, I think."

"It doesn't. Does he know?" Marian asks. She watching their linked hands, the way that Alistair's stepped just a little in front of Bethany like a shield. The helmet on the table shines in the syrupy light in through the front door. It's a gauntlet thrown down between them.

"He knows," Bethany says, fingers tightening. He knows, he knows, he _knows_.

Marian's eyes narrow. "Does he, Bethany? Does he _really_?"

She means: _do I have to kill him?_ She means: _did he hurt you?_ She means: _Bethany,_ _how could you let this_ happen _?_

"If you mean the mage thing," Alistair says, risking life and limb though he can't know it. He's staring at Marian like a hundred thousand things suddenly make sense. _Mage thing_ , he says. _Mage thing_. "Yes, I know. She told me—," and then he stops to remember the way that Bethany had poured her magic into the little boy to burn the fever out, and amends, "— _showed_ me."

Marian tilts her head at him so that her fringe falls across her eyes. It shadows her gaze, makes her look intimidating, but Bethany knows that Marian only does it because she _knows_ it makes her look like she's bigger than she is, that it gives people pause, gives her a few minutes to contemplate any given situation to decide how to react to it. She watches them, attention flickering between their twined fingers, the templar helmet on the table, Dog curled up in front of the fire. Bethany doesn't know what her sister finds in the regard, but it must be _something_ , because after a moment she nods sharply and the ice in her expression melts until she's nothing but Bethany's older sister again.

The killer recedes, the daggers slip back in their sheaths, and the whole room lets out a collective breath.

But Marian has never been one to let things lie. "Wonderful," she says. When she opens her mouth, the blood across her nose stretches lazily. Bethany feels a little sick. "Our little adventure just got _so_ much more exciting. A templar! _You_ get to tell Carver."

"Tell me what?"

"Nothing, dearest, Mother's not in here. Go check the garden," Marian sings, waves him away even as she moves to block his line of sight. It's a small mercy, and the sound of Carver's heavy steps against packed earth fade into nothing. She looks between Alistair and Bethany for another too-long moment, face inscrutable.

Time hangs, suspended.

There's an apology somewhere in Bethany's throat, but she doesn't say it because she won't mean it. Alistair's hand is warm and large, rough with calluses from holding a sword, and he still hasn't let go. Warmth unspools in Beth's chest, a skein of golden light wound tight around her heart, and she thinks of the long hot days in between the first time she'd seen him and now. He's breaking holy laws just to know her. Her sister is nothing, compared to that.

"I hope you're ready to leave," Marian says, voice light. Bethany can tell that her mind is far away; it's the way she talks, like she's not even there. "The horde isn't going to wait. Bethy, love, do you have your staff?"

"Yes. Why?"

"We're going to need it. Ostagar's lost," Marian says. Her eyebrow quirks up and she smiles, but it's not a happy thing. "The King is dead."

Alistair goes perfectly still.

"Oh, Maker," Beth breathes.

"That's what I said, but less vulgar," Marian says. She kneels down next to Dog, knee _cracking_ sickly. It's the most tactful invitation for privacy that Bethany's ever seen, and while her sister wrestles with her mabari, it's easy for Beth to tip her face up to look at the man at her side.

"Alistair?" Bethany asks, very softly. His hand's turned clammy in hers, and she has an absurd desire to touch his cheek and wipe away the ash that's settled into his expression. He looks like a man about to go to his death. "Are you alright?"

"No," he says, faint. His grip tightens. "I'm—I'll tell you later?"

Later, when her sister isn't watching them like the hawk she is. Dog barks, loud and raucous. It bounces off the walls until it's a cacophony of noise, and the silly creature scares himself and goes bounding outside. Marian whistles for him through her teeth, but he's long gone. She sighs, raises the cool blue of her attention to the pair of them. "Are you coming with us?"

"Me?" Alistair asks.

"No, the helmet on the table," Marian bares her teeth. " _Yes_ , you."

"I don't—I don't know," he says.

"The horde is coming," Bethany's sister says. Her voice is perfectly without emotion, simply matter of fact. "There's no stopping it. We tried, and there are several thousand dead bodies in Ostagar to prove it. If you stay here, templar, _you will die_. And then Bethy will be upset, and that's really not something I want to deal with today. So take your pick, but do it quickly. I have very little patience for indecision."

"Mari—" Beth starts, mouth pulling down. Her sister is a _terror_.

"It's his choice, Bethy," Marian cuts her off, very simply. "Let him choose."

"Will it help?"

"It'll keep you alive. And another sword is another sword," Marian says, easily. She waves at the space between them. "Whatever's happening here—whatever _this_ is—you'll keep on eye on Bethy, that much is _painfully_ obvious. And that's all I ask. I'll even keep Carver from glowering at you too much!"

He thinks about it for a second, looks down at Bethany in the interim. She doesn't know what he sees in her face, but it must be something, because finally, he nods. Slowly, so slowly, he nods.

"I'll come," Alistair says. "Yes, I'll—I'll come."

"Spectacular," Marian claps, face splitting into a horrible smirk. "Now, if we're all agreed. I _would_ like to go before the darkspawn come to eat us. Death by the chomping jaws of a monster really isn't the way I want to go, it's _so_ overdone," she says, surveys them up and down a second time. "Yes?"

"Andraste, Mari, go _away_ , you've traumatized us all enough!" Bethany says.

Her sister—cackles, that's the only word for the sound she makes. She throws back her head and _cackles_ , dark shorn feathery hair absolutely everywhere. "Oh, Bethy, you found a _spine_ while I was gone! Alright, alright, I'm going. Hurry up, sister mine, we need to decide where to spend the rest of our days!"

The door swings shut behind her, cutting off the mad laughter and Dog's barking. It's a blessing, as much as anything is.

"Is she always like that?" Alistair finally asks, stricken.

Bethany sighs, thinking of all the ways that her sister ruins people's lives (or ends them, depending on how she's feeling that particular day. Honestly, she's like a cat: casual murder is Marian Hawke's trademark, and if one day it comes back to bite them all in the arse, Bethany isn't going to be surprised). On the usual scale, this hardly counts. "Unfortunately, yes. That's my sister for you. She loves to make life difficult. Alistair, about—about—do you want to talk about it?"

"Not really," Alistair swallows. "But we should. The King's dead," he says. "I—can't believe it."

"Marian wouldn't lie," Bethany says, shaking her head. "Well, no, she would, but not about this."

"No, I know that, it's just—" Alistair's smile goes strange, darkness hiding in the corners of it as it stretches out unreal. "Well, if we're going north, you should probably know. My—I told you that I'm a bastard, didn't I? And that Arl Eamon raised me."

Bethany nods. It had been a very quiet conversation, sitting on a hill. He'd looked at his hands for a very long time. She'd touched his elbow.

Alistair blows out a breath, shoulders dropping. "The reason he did that was because—well, because my father was King Maric. Which made Cailan my… half-brother, I suppose. I should have told you before, but I—"

He breaks off, can't quite look at her.

"You wanted to be normal," Bethany finishes the sentence for him. Maker knows, but she knows what that feels like. And everyone has secrets—the ones between her and him are out in the open now, at least. They can't do any more damage. Mage, templar, prince; there's not much else they could hurt each other with. "I understand."

"Do you?" he asks. "You don't think I'm—?"

Beth holds her hand out, palm up. A tiny fire sparks into existence and she holds it there for a moment. The flame is edged in blue and green, like it's burning salted wood. "I get it, Alistair. You know that I do."

She lets the flame go out, closes her hand into a fist. For a moment, it's very quiet between them.

"Where do you think we'll go?"

"Kirkwall, maybe," Bethany murmurs. She leans against him, head against his shoulder. Andraste, she's tired. She's so _tired_. "My mother has family there."

"There are a lot of templars in Kirkwall," Alistair says, hesitantly slipping an arm around her shoulders. It's warm and heavy as a wool blanket, and just about as reassuring.

Bethany looks up him, steadily, for a very long time. It won't be the first time she's thought about this; her mother, and Kirkwall, and the templars. Always the templars. The setting sun burns along her bare shoulders, turns the whole world dripping crimson-gold. It washes over them like a war. " _You're_ a templar. Would they expect you to be hiding a mage?"

He presses his thumb into the pulse in her wrist. "No," he says.

"And they wouldn't expect the prince of Ferelden to be anywhere near Kirkwall. We'd be… ordinary, together. Would you mind pretending?" she asks, because even after everything, she has to know. She has to _know_.

"No," he says, again. Her heart is in her throat, and she thinks he must be able to feel it thundering away, fear and hope in equal measure. Alistair turns her hands over in his, so gentle. "Would it really be pretending, Bethany?"

"Wouldn't it?"

"I don't think so," he says. He's staring very hard at her palms, like he's trying to see right through her to the blue-green magic that hovers just beneath her skin. The sunset throws him all in shadows until he's nothing but the curve of a cheek, depressions for eyes, protrusion of nose. His armour looks so heavy. "It wouldn't be pretending. Not for me."

"It wouldn't be pretending for me, either," Bethany whispers it like the confession it is. All her insides clench. She remembers the first day in the Chantry, sitting in the pews with her head down like she couldn't see him, like she hadn't watched him from the minute he stepped in. As though she didn't pay attention to every single new templar who walked through those doors. As though the kindness in him wasn't entirely foreign. "You know that they'll think we're—"

"Let them think," Alistair says. He brushes a curl off her forehead. He is so infinitely gentle.

"You'll have to deal with my siblings," Bethany says, a little thickly. Her throat sticks. "They might never—never—I mean, _look_ at them."

He does. Carver and Marian are standing up on the rise, the former tall and scowling grumpily—his face is going to stick like that—and the latter feigning a dramatic death and falling over to roll in the dirt behind him. Mother is watching the pair of them, despair written all over her posture, and Dog's barking madly. Everything's gone up in flames, but this is her family: small and cracked and liable to kill a man for one another. Lothering is behind them, and for all that Marian pretends that nothing is wrong, it will be a long mourning.

No, her siblings may never anything. They may never _everything_.

But it's something.

And it could be good.

Kirkwall has a lot of templars, and Bethany has a lot of magic. And it won't be—it won't be easy. She knows that, standing here in the shadow of the Imperial Highway with her hands tucked into his, she knows that it's never going to be _easy_. It'll be wolves and dragons and darkspawn, and for all the Maker knows, they might all die.

Alistair catches her chin, tips her face up. He's grinning, but there's a softness to his eyes that twists her heart. "Worth it," he says.

"Really?"

"Really."

"Did you know you're not a very good templar, Alistair," she says, the corners of her lips curling up, a hysteric little bubble of laughter bursting in her chest. He is the worst templar, and it's wonderful. He is the worst templar, and she can't imagine him any other way. Bethany stands up on her tiptoes to brush her mouth against the corner of his, and she thinks she can feel him smile.

Alistair's hand comes up to curl around her hip, pull her close. "I'm not surprised. It's not a very rewarding job, I've found. No benefits, and piss-poor social skills. But Maker's breath, I'd make an even worse prince. Just unlucky, I suppose?"

"I suppose," Bethany echoes, laughter pitched soft, and tugs him down to kiss him properly.

—

.

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.

.

_tbc._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> anyway i haven't slept in three days so here have the templar!alistair au of my dreams wherein he and beth mostly hold hands a lot and also you can fuckin fight me #kanyeshrug


	2. by the skin of your teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just so everyone knows, this is not a plotty fic. this is a self-indulgent schmoopy fic for me to mostly cry about my otps holding hands and kissing each other. my hawke is purple, an avowed lesbian, and probably the best sister ever except that she, y'know, ran off to antiva for three years before her father died to learn to be an assassin. she also kills like… 90 percent of the people she comes across, and i don't think she actually owns any clothing that hasn't been covered in blood, booze, or vomit at one point or another. sometimes all three! she's the worst at being a rich person, honestly.

**notes2** : [A WILD PLAYLIST APPEARS!](http://8tracks.com/sarsaparillia/pretty-much-an-indie-love-song)

—

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Taking ship from Gwaren to Kirkwall is an uncomfortable affair.

Bethany drowses in the hold, face pressed into the crook of Alistair's neck. It's dark and quiet, no light filtering down from up on deck, no noise at all. He's shed the armour, and his skin is warm beneath hers. She's been ill for the last three days, and the queasiness hasn't gone even though there's nothing left in her stomach to sick up. Her family lounges around them, all nearly as tired as Beth herself is.

It's been a very long journey.

And it's not over yet.

(Templars and darkspawn and dragons, oh _my_! Bethany is amazed that they've survived this long—of course Marian had the gall to go and sass an actual myth. Of course it kept them all alive. Of course she picked up a friend on the way by killing a bunch of darkspawn. _Of course_.)

Carver's flopped on her other side, breath heavy with proper sleep. There's something in her chest that wants her to reach out to run a hand through his hair, but her sister is already there, blue eyes glittering in the dark. The pendant the witch gave them is tucked beneath her shirt on a long silver chain, as much a duty as it is a threat. Bethany doesn't think Marian slept a wink on this ship, and it shows: her sister is too alert, running on the manic edge between casual murder and a full meltdown.

Which is just as she likes it, of course, so maybe not.

"Are you awake?" Alistair murmurs into Bethany's ear.

"No," she breathes, eyes closed. The _slop_ of waves against wood is loud in her head, not a sound heard so much as felt, but he's idly wrapping curls around his fingers. The tug of it is gentle enough to lull her back into something resembling rest.

"That sounds awake to me," he says, low and kind of amused as he slides his arms around her and pulls her into his lap, settles her careful in between his legs. Back to chest, so they can feel each other breathe. "Look, you're moving, that counts!"

"How does it count when you're the one who moved me?" Bethany asks, eyes still closed, but she's smiling for the first time in what feels like forever. He drops his chin to her shoulder, and for a moment, she's very glad that Carver is a heavy sleeper. Mother and her sister don't mind, and Aveline will only watch with a slight tightening to her eyes, but her twin is still always the wariest of the Hawke family. Beth doesn't blame him.

"Doesn't," Alistair says. He drops his chin to her shoulder to speak right into her ear. Three days at sea and four before that travelling to Gwaren, and he's scruffy all over. It tickles and she squirms, biting back a giggle. "But you're talking now, and talking is always awake."

"Maybe I talk in my sleep," Bethany says. Alistair's hand finds hers, all calluses and heat to burn away the dank cold of the ship's hold. He's always so warm: it makes her think of the long days that seem still so close, sunshine in through the Chantry windows, Lothering's dry air prickling along her skin. She burrows into it, shifting until her knees are up to her chest and she's curled with her cheek pressed to his chest right above his heart.

She thinks she can feel the way he's grinning. "Or maybe you—"

"Could you two please go flirt somewhere else? Some of us are trying to sleep, but can't for the retching. You're getting your feelings everywhere," Marian cuts him off, voice slicing through the dark like a knife in between ribs. Alistair and Beth both look up to blink at her, the sharpness at odds with her usual sarcastic charm when her siblings are involved. She's smiling, the faint curl of lips visible even through the gloom, and it lessens the bite.

Bethany colours brightly, opens her mouth to say something because her sister is the _worst_ , honestly—

Alistair nudges her before she can get any words out, and she goes still.

"C'mon, fresh air will do us both good. No darkspawn, just air and empty ocean to drown in," he says, and it's so quietly, absurdly cheerful that Bethany has to smother another giggle. The ship rocks, and her stomach threatens in her throat. Oh, Maker, if she never gets on another ship, it'll be too soon.

"I don't think I can go anywhere," Bethany says, curling a little tighter around herself. It's _miserable_ , merely bile and water left inside of her. Even her magic can't get rid of it, and the way it churns through her only makes her feel worse.

"Will it help if I carry you?" Alistair asks wryly. "I'll do that. if I must—"

"Children," Marian says, so sweet that she almost doesn't sound annoyed. She is so annoyed. "The feelings, please. They're worse than blood, we're never going to get the stains out."

Well, _that's_ a revolting thought. Alistair makes a faintly disgusted sound as he pushes into standing and then helps Bethany up, knuckles and wrists and arms all solid around her until she gets her footing. The world inverts as she figures out balance, upside down for a whole too-long moment, and then it settles.

Andraste's _knickers_ , she really hates ships.

At least her stomach is back where it belongs. Alistair's hand finds hers, and they walk on silent feet to the steps up to the deck. They're not the only passengers on this ship, not by far, but they might be the only ones left awake enough to be alive. Even the crew have settled down for the night.

It's into complete silence that they ascend. The Amaranthine seems kinder, from here: a roar and a wisp all at once. Everything smells of salt, and they pick their way across the deck to a little corner in the lee of the masts, out of sight of the helm and the captain's cabin. They're not really supposed to be up here, but it's late and there's no one to tell them that they can't.

They stand together, fingers still linked, and stare up into the universe.

"Look," Bethany murmurs. It's such a perfect, still night; the sky unfurls deepest indigo, scattered with a million diamond-twinkle stars. It's the kind of night no one speaks louder than a whisper for fear of disturbing it. "The dragon."

"Sacrifice," Alistair says, pointing to somewhere along the horizon. The constellation seems to brighten at the brighten at the mention. "And the wolf."

"Fenrir," she says. The sea air bites cold into her lungs, salt and rust, and for the first time since she stepped onto this godforsaken vessel, she doesn't feel like she's about to be sick. It's easier up here, to breathe. "They used to call it Fenrir."

He shuffles a little closer, so that their shoulders touch. Bethany hesitates only a moment, and then she leans into it enough that he slips an arm around her, gathers her into the crook of his body. Neither of them are any good at this, and it shows. They're stumbling through the dark with their fingers linked, both blind as bats. And probably they're going to crash, crash hard and crash violent, but…

It's a learning thing, a thing evolving slowly.

"Oh, not pretentious at all," he says, the corner of his lips pulling up. "Almost as bad as the real names for the months."

"My father used to study them," Bethany says, craning her head back as far as it'll go to take in the whole endless sprawl of the sky. It goes on and on and on, a perfect unbroken sphere. Only the starlight cuts through, the drippy silver of the moon. "The constellations, I mean. When he was in the Gallows, before he and my mother ran off together. He didn't really like to talk about it, but sometimes he'd—" and here she breaks off, sighs out something like frost. "He'd be furious that I'm going anywhere within a league of that place. He hated it there."

Alistair's grip tightens. "Beth, I…"

"It's alright," Bethany shakes her head fiercely, curls everywhere. "It's not—there's nowhere else, and I'll take templars over darkspawn any day. You can't really hide from the taint. Once that gets you, you're done."

They both go still as they remember Wesley, and how he'd called Alistair _brother_ , and how the grief still howls in Aveline's eyes.

(Bethany hasn't seen the knife she killed him with, but she thinks that it's probably hidden safely away in a boot somewhere as a reminder for all the things already lost in the pursuit of safety. Whatever the woman gains, it will always be shadowed. Even when she moves on and finds something else to live for, the mark will remain.)

"No one's going to lock you away," Alistair says, very softly. He pulls her even closer. It's the easiest thing in the world to tuck her face into his throat, to let him fill in all her nooks and crannies and cracks until they're more one person than two.

"How do you know?" Bethany asks. Her voice is so small. Her hands, curled into the fabric of his shirt, flex.

"I won't let them," he runs his hand down the line of her spine, like it's just that simple. _I won't let them_ means a lot of things, and they all get stuck in her throat: _no one would expect a templar to be hiding a mage_ and _we'll be so careful_ and _I'll keep you safe_. It's halfways to a promise, so close to something permanent.

"Aren't you scared?"

"No," Alistair says, shrugs. "Are you?"

"A little," Bethany has to breathe it, because it feels too big for saying aloud.

"More or less than you were before? If it's more, I'm doing something wrong—"

"No, it's okay," Beth whispers, trying not to smile. Her magic prickles beneath her skin; it's always been the wildest part of her, the most base, the part that says _do what you want and damn the consequences_ , and it wants him. It wants him, it wants him, it wants him. "I'm okay."

—

Solid ground after a week at sea is a benediction.

Which is good, because nothing else is.

Marian and Carver and Aveline push their way to the front of a crowd of refugees while Bethany hangs back, tucked safely between Alistair and Mother. People give them a wide berth; Alistair's armour is a slick silverite shine in the sunlight, and no one wants to get too close for fear of it. Sometimes she wishes that they weren't like this, her family, but she can't imagine them any other way. They drive her to distraction, and she loves them absurdly.

And so this is what Bethany has, deep in the dark sticky place in her soul where she has no tears left to cry: Alistair's kindness, Carver's loyalty, Marian's killing edge.

In the stark white glare of Kirkwall's Gallows, it's what gets her through.

"They're not letting us in," Carver grumbles as he stations himself right behind Beth; being boxed in like this on all sides is the worst thing for some people, but for Bethany, it just means that no one can get at her. Safety, like a set of steel bones.

"They're not letting _anyone_ in," Aveline corrects him, crossing her arms over her chest. She stares out across the sea of refugees, all cold and hungry and haggard, and her eyes narrow. "I don't like this."

"No one does," says Marian cheerfully, but her hands linger too long on the hilts of her daggers. "We need to get out of here."

She means: _we need to get_ Bethany _out of here_.

Well, she isn't going to argue that. The Gallows give her creepy-crawly shivers, a film of slime that clings absolutely everywhere that she can't shake off. Alistair's arm tightens around her waist in wordless agreement.

Bethany has to smile. He really is the worst at being a templar.

"I could try," Alistair offers, hesitant.

Marian looks at him, expression wiped briefly clean; there's nothing in her face, just the bright blue ice of her gaze. It passes over Alistair and Bethany without aggression. Flicks away to the Gallows' gates. Hovers. Flicks to Aveline, to Carver. To Mother. Flicks back.

"I suppose you could," she says at last, voice like silk soaked in poison, delicate and soft and just as likely as a sword to kill someone when they're not paying attention. "Would you be going alone?"

"No," Alistair says. He raises his head to stare at Bethany's sister squarely, and doesn't say anything else.

Marian's lips curl up, smoke and shadow. In the sunlight, she's an unreal thing. Her canines are so sharp. "Well, go on, then," she says, "I'm not stopping you. If can find Gamlen, punch him in the nose for me."

Alistair unwinds himself from around Bethany very slowly. It's the kind of slow that has more to do with not wanting to unwind at all than care for armour against thin skin, but there's that, too. He frowns a little. "Sorry, I should have asked. Do you want to come?"

Bethany has to work very hard to ignore the heavy weight of her twin's stare on the back of her neck. She knows what Carver thinks about this, about Alistair; it's impossible to _not_ know what Carver thinks, because there are days that Bethany knows his mind better than she knows her own.

And maybe he's right. Maybe this is a terrible idea. Maybe all it's going to lead to is a Harrowing Chamber and a room inside the Gallows' cold stone walls. Maybe it's the worst decision she's ever made.

Maybe she's lost her mind, entire.

But maybe not.

She tucks a stray curl behind her ear. Nods. "I'll come."

When she chances a glance upwards, a tiny, incredibly silly grin's broken across his face. Bethany wants to frame it and hide it away somewhere deep behind her heart, to take out and look at when the days get bad. It's that kind of grin, too soft and special for anyone else to understand. It hums along her bones, a near perfect mirror for Lothering: he'd said _I'll come_ , and so now she says it right back. _I'll come. I'll come. I'll come_.

(A lot of things are a near perfect mirror for Lothering. Sometimes she wonders about that.)

Bethany shakes her twin's trepidation off and curls her hand around Alistair's elbow. She's left other homes, but Carver is one that she'll always come back to. They'll survive. They always do.

"Missus Hawke—"

"Leandra," the woman sighs. She's known Alistair longer than either of Bethany's siblings; she was there when he asked _what can I do_ , and it shows. She trusts him in ways that neither Carver nor Marian do, ways that neither of them may _ever_ be able to. "We've talked about this, Alistair. It's Leandra."

Alistair colours. "Lean—I'm sorry, I can't, it's rude, the Revered Mother would never forgive me. Missus Hawke, would you like to come with us?"

"No," Leandra says, eyes glinting with something that isn't mirth. "No, I think I'll stay here. Gamlen won't recognize anyone else."

Gamlen might not recognize anyone, anyway. The Gallows bleach them all out, warped and stretched 'til it's impossible to tell what's real, anymore. The waves of Fereldan refugees make Bethany think of Lothering, hollow eyes in gaunt faces, and she shudders.

Alistair's armour gets them past the guards that had stopped her sister; the templars pay them no mind beyond throwing an uneasy side-glance their way, and then lapsing back into a resigned sort of indifference. If nothing else, the armour good for that.

"Talk to Thrask," they say, when Alistair asks. "He should be in his office."

Thrask is a terrifying name.

Bethany keeps her head down, tries to keep her magic from prickling across her skin and giving them both away.

_You can do this_ , she tells herself. _You have to_.

And so Bethany steels herself, holds onto Alistair's elbow a little tighter, and walks with as much grace as she has left.

Ser Thrask sits at a desk in a little office at the end of a very long hallway. Bethany only catches a flash of his face: blue eyes wrinkled with something worse than exhaustion, the curve of a cheek, a rather magnificent auburn beard over the templar armour. She can't look at him much longer, not here, not now. The Gallows clang around her, the faint sound of Tranquil explaining their wares over and over, weaponsmiths and armoursmiths alike hounding the templars. And above it all, the weeping statues in their chains, faces hidden in their giant hands.

There is no place in the entire world that Bethany wants to be trapped less.

But Alistair is talking to Ser Thrask, earnest as he ever is, and this is probably something she ought to be paying attention to.

"—an uncle in the city, but I'm not leaving her out there."

Ser Thrask considers this for a moment, and then turns to regard Bethany herself. "Alistair says you were married in the spring?"

Bethany nods, dipping her head so she doesn't have to meet his eyes. A delicate flush crawls across her cheeks, mostly because it doesn't feel like a lie. Well, that's alarming. "I grew up in Lothering—I was planning to join the Chantry there. And then…"

Marian taught Bethany a lot of things, but the one that sticks between her ribs even now is this: _if you're going to tell a lie, make it a true one_.

Nothing she's said is objectively untrue. She did grow up in Lothering. She _was_ planning to join the Chantry, or at least the part of her that liked to pretend it was normal had been. And then Alistair had happened, and the darkspawn, and now here they are.

"Hm," says Ser Thrask. There are papers scattered all over the desk and he spends a moment straightening them, muttering to himself under his breath too low to hear. He stands and shuffles over to the armoire, pulls it open to sort through another sheaf of papers. "I suppose—we could always use…"

For a very tense minute, Bethany's terrified that they have made a very dire mistake.

"There we are. Your papers are in order," Ser Thrask says, at last. It's a lie, and they both know it; Alistair hadn't had any papers, and he hasn't any now. But Ser Thrask is looking at them with tired eyes, sad eyes, and Bethany thinks that he understands. "Your duty roster and your room assignment, Ser Alistair, but I doubt you'll spend many nights, here. The ones with families rarely do."

"Thank you, Ser Thrask," someone murmurs. Could be either of them. Could be both.

"Try not to get into trouble," the man says. His mustache twitches. "And welcome to Kirkwall."

Alistair says something to the effect of, _of course, sir_ , but Bethany can't really concentrate on that. She's not sure how they leave Ser Thrask's office; it must happen, because suddenly they're outside in the Gallows' courtyard blinking against the sunlight, but she doesn't remember it happening.

"Are you alright?" Alistair asks, quietly, when they're alone.

"No," Bethany manages around the lump in her throat. "No, I don't think so."

"Beth, you're shaking," he says, so gentle.

"I know. That was horrible," Bethany whispers. Everything is so tight inside that she thinks she might shake to pieces. She's glad he's pulled her into the shadow of a gate where no one can see, because she thinks that if she has to spend another minute so _watched_ , she's going to explode. "I don't ever want to have to stay here, I feel like I can't breathe."

"You won't have to," Alistair says. He gathers her up, so very careful not to nick armour into her skin too hard, but he keeps her close, tucks her face into the crook of his neck. "It's alright, you're alright, we're alright."

It's not alright, not really, but the mantra of it calms her some. Staying in the Gallows is only going to prolong this crawling paralysis. Alistair and Bethany have passage into and out of the city, but that means nothing when the rest of their party are still trapped between the docks and the templars. Having a bed and a roof is only part of the breakdown, and Bethany sleeps curled around Alistair's back, aching from the separation.

Three days the Hawke family hovers between inspiration and urgency, and then Gamlen finally comes.

He's a small, slimy man who wears his hair slicked back, and Bethany hates him on sight. From the way Marian and Carver both go tense, she knows they feel the same. Aveline watches him like a hawk watches a snake, and Alistair actually steps in front of Bethany to keep her out of the man's sight.

But Mother throws her arms around him, talking about the estate and the family and her parents and for one minute, for _one minute_ , things seems like they might be alright.

And then Uncle Gamlen sells them into slavery.

Near enough to it, anyway; Marian and Carver sign with a mercenary captain who leers as easy as he breathes to pay both their uncle's debts and their passage into the city, and Bethany privately thinks that her sister is going to clock the man in the face with the hilt of her knife before they even leave the Gallows. She can already see it happening, especially when Meeran grins, gap-toothed and awful, and says loudly enough for the templars to hear, "Too bad, you can always use a mage, dead useful they are, are you sure your sister isn't—?"

"If you say another word about my sister, I will cut out your tongue," Marian says, smiling sweetly.

Meeran laughs and laughs and laughs. He goes to pay the bribe.

Bethany drops her head to Alistair's shoulder and breathes, breathes.

Breathes.

—

Uncle Gamlen lives in a shack.

_A nice place in Lowtown_ , he'd called it. _A nice place_.

Andraste's blood, this place is a _slum_.

But it's what they have. Mother refuses to speak to anyone, and Carver and Marian do whatever they can to keep Meeran's crew from ranging through the streets at night. Aveline joins the guard, three weeks in—Bethany thinks that the mercenaries are all a little terrified of her, they let her go so easily—and Alistair makes the trip from Lowtown to the Gallows every morning.

It's a quiet little life, difficult and frustrating in turn, but predictable enough.

There a lot of templars, in Kirkwall.

Some days, Bethany doesn't even see the sun.

And then one day, a month and a half after Ser Thrask probably broke a dozen laws, it's like this:

"I have something to show you," Alistair says. His hair is sticking up in all directions, the grin he's wearing a little manic, and he's still in his armour. Bethany blinks at him. She's holding a wooden spoon, and Gamlen's house is empty save for the pair of them. Mother's gone out, and Carver and Marian have been on a week-long run for Meeran. Even Dog's gone, probably off chasing her uncle all the way up to High Town and barking madly all the while.

"Alistair," Bethany says, sets the spoon down, "are you—are you alright?"

"Yes, I'm fine, but I need—do you trust me?"

"Of course I do. Why? What have you found?" she asks.

"Come with me," Alistair says. He offers her a gauntleted hand, nearly vibrating with excitement. It's a foreign thing, here in Uncle Gamlen's tiny hovel; excitement has no place in this drippy, dank hovel. It's too bright and too colourful and too _alive_ , too much like possibility.

Bethany doesn't hesitate.

She takes his hand.

It's a mad dash out of the house, down the steps from Uncle Gamlen's and all the way through the slums, past the Hanged Man and through the market. It's just before supper, not quite the end of the day but getting there, and there's spiced meat and sea salt on the breeze. They don't stop until they've run near the entire length of Lowtown, beyond the turn off to the docks and right at the edge of the industrial district. The forges here gush thin silver smoke all the time to be swept away on the wind off the water, and the buildings are solid stone weathered goldenrod. Alistair leads her a little further, up a flight of stairs to break into a tiny courtyard that looks out onto the Waking Sea.

"Where are we?" Bethany asks, a little breathless. Marian is the one who does the mad runs in the dead of night; this is a new experience, and one she's not sure she likes.

"We—I know you hate living with Gamlen," Alistair says, all in a rush. "No one should live in the slums, it's the worst, I'd never—but it doesn't matter. You hate living there, right?"

Bethany nods, doesn't trust herself to speak.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. So. There's—you're better off seeing it. Come up? Over here."

Bethany follows him across the courtyard and up a couple of steps, to a door with a brassy handle. It's unlocked, and that's a little strange because this is Kirkwall and it's never safe to leave your doors unlocked, but she doesn't really have time to think about it. Alistair pushes the door open, holding it for Beth to slip inside.

It's a very small place, this little home. Three rooms: a space that doubles as kitchen and main living area, a tiny space that might have been a cupboard in another life, and a slightly larger room that could maybe fit a bed if a person was lucky and also if they possibly bent the laws of physics. The air still reeks of salt water poured over molten metal, the hiss of steam; they're very close to the forges, here, trapped between Kirkwall's industrial sector and the docks.

But it's clean—insofar as Lowtown ever really gets clean—and it's warm, and there are slabs of rock cut out of the walls to serve as makeshift windows to look out onto the Waking Sea. The sun pours in through sets of rickety wooden shutters which could probably do with a coat of paint, but they'll keep the cold out when the winter rains come.

And Maker knows that anything is a damn sight better than Uncle Gamlen's place in the slums.

"Where are we?" Bethany whispers the question, this time. It trembles in the air between them.

"It's—well," he draws in a deep breath like he's fortifying himself, "—it's ours. Mine. Yours. If you want it."

"How?"

"I convinced Ser Thrask that the slums are no place to start a—I've been looking, he told me about—and there was, they don't want me out of the barracks but they know that I'm, that we're, that you aren't—"

"Alistair," Bethany says, holds up a hand to hush him because she thinks he might ramble himself into an early grave if he keeps it up, "it's perfect. I—thank you."

He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck the way he always does when he's nervous about something. As though she'd say anything else, as though the fact that he's gone and found them somewhere _safe_ isn't the most incredible thing anyone's ever done for her. "I wasn't sure—I know it's small, but your mother said—"

"No," she says, shaking her head. "No, it's amazing, it even has windows, how can I convince you that it's—I don't— _thank_ you."

He flushes all the way to the tips of his ears, but he still won't quite meet her eye.

"They, uh—they expect me to stay here?" he says, a little desperately. "They think—well, you know they think we're—I'll sleep in the other room if you want me to, it doesn't—"

Bethany tilts her head at him, tucks her curls behind her ears to keep them out of her eyes. "Alistair," she says, slowly, "they think we're _married_. Of course you're going to stay here, that's just—you don't need to sleep in the other room."

"Look, I—are you sure?"

"Well, there isn't really another bed big enough for two, and I can't imagine my mother will want to share—"

"Maker's breath, Beth!"

She bursts into laughter, real laughter, honest and high and too big for her body. It's the kind of laughter that hurts the ribs and the cheeks and the stomach, goes on for too long because it grows and grows. It might be the first laughter this place has heard in an Age, and Bethany has to reach up to cup her palms around his chin, mirth still secreted away in the corners of her lips. The look he gives her is reproachful at best, and it nearly sets her off again.

She pushes it down and away. _Later, Bethy, he doesn't need you_ laughing _at him right now_!

"It's fine," she says, watches his face smooth out and his shoulders go down. "I'd rather you be here than not, and I don't—I don't want to sleep alone."

He folds around her like every house of cards she's ever built, presses his face into her hair and inhales like he's trying to pull her inside of him. He holds on a little too tight, a little too close, and she realizes that he honestly thought she was going to make him leave. After everything, he thought she didn't—Andraste, the silly man.

(The worst part, Bethany knows, is that he'd have done it. If she told him to leave, he would have, would have gone and never bothered her again. He'd have taken every secret she's told him to his grave, her magic and her father and her every single fear. It's that kindness again, the kindness that runs all the way down to his core. There are so few people that kind in the whole world. A wave of affection so fierce it's painful throbs through her.)

"And you said you weren't scared," Bethany tells his chest, smiling.

"That was an incredible lie, I am an incredible liar, you should never trust me again," Alistair says, voice muffled by her hair. He takes a great shuddering breath, arms curled tight around her waist. Bethany finds herself tucking in his ragged edges, smoothing over the cracks that he's so good at hiding, her fingers all aglow with the blue-green sparkle of healing magic.

"You're not so bad," she says, soft and fond.

"A ringing endorsement of my personality! I bet you could convince the Divine to make me Knight-Commander, talking like that," he chuckles, but it's not a very happy sound.

"Alistair…" she trails off, eyebrows drawing together. He says things like that, sometimes, things that sound so flippant on the outside even though they're really shattered all the way through. The longer she listens, the more it happens. Bethany's mouth pulls down as she looks up at him.

"I'm alright, don't worry," he says. "I'm breathing, aren't I?"

"I always worry," she says. "Breathing doesn't always mean alright."

Alistair grins at her, slow and sweet as thick golden syrup—he's always slow and sweet when he wants something; syrup, sugar, molasses—and he catches her hand and brings it up to his lips to kiss the tips of her fingers, still faintly glimmering with the last vestiges of the healing. It's like all the air goes out of the world, eaten up by the lick of heat that goes up her spine when he drags his tongue along the crease of her palm, sucks her thumb into his mouth.

_Oh_ , she thinks, faintly. _Oh_.

"You taste like magic," Alistair rasps, voice a hoarse, gravel-low _crunch_ , and she thinks of Lothering, elfroot in her nose, bark at her back. His teeth nick into her skin like electricity. "Maker's breath, Beth, you taste exactly like magic."

"What does magic taste like?" Bethany asks, breathe caught in her throat. She can't—she can't think beyond the white-hot pulse of _want_ and the strangest fragility like she might shatter into a million pieces if he takes his hands off of her even for a minute. Her magic sings beneath her skin: _I want, I want, I want_.

"Burnt sugar," he says, pupils blown so wide, "and sea salt."

"Alistair," she manages, head spinning, "Alistair, you should probably kiss me now."

"I can do that," he murmurs. He gathers her hair in his hands, a tight fist of curls. Uses it to tilt her head so that the soft flesh of her throat is exposed and vulnerable, pulse so visible, but all he does is kiss the corner of her mouth. Her back hits the wall, solid stone under her shoulders, and then the world blurs out.

Later, Beth will remember it like this:

Afternoon sunlight in through the windows. His hand around her thigh, the sharp cut of her waist, laughing when he finds the ticklish spot high on the cup of her ribs. The _hiss_ of her mail coiling on the floor, ice on her lips when she can't completely control the churn of magic, hitch of breath when his mouth closes on the junction of her neck and her shoulder and she makes a tiny sweet sound high in her throat that has him groaning and lifting her off the floor. Legs locked around hips at the ankle, the hot slow roll of it zinging up her spine, and oh, Andraste, she wants to climb inside his skin.

It's like being plunged underwater, everything that isn't _right here, right now_ muted down to nothing. Bethany tugs at his shirt, wants it off, utterly beyond thought. She just—she _wants_.

"Please," she says, and doesn't even know what she's asking for.

"I know," he says. It shouldn't make sense. It does, anyway.

From very far away, someone knocks.

"Beth, the door," Alistair murmurs. He's pressed so close that he's her entire world, endless and golden and crooked. The edges of who they are and who they ought to be blend into each other, those awful edges where he ends and she begins smoothed over and melding together. For the first time in a very long time, nothing hurts.

"Leave it," she says, mouth red, kissed too much and kissed not even close to enough. She curls her hands into the remains of his shirt—she doesn't remember tearing it, how did that happen, and are those singe marks—and tries to slot their mouths together again. "Leave it, I don't care, come _back_ here—"

The knocking doesn't cease.

"We're not home!" Bethany manages to get out. Alistair's teeth press into her skin, and she nearly forgets how to speak. "Come back later!"

"Bethany, it's your mother," says a voice muffled through the door. "Let me in."

They're off each other fast as a burn.

A frantic minute later, Bethany's opening the door, looking the least presentable she ever has probably in her entire life from wild hair to rumpled shift. Alistair's over on the other side of the room, right by the window, bleached out white by the sunshine and he looks like something out of a fairy tale, hair sticking up every which way from where she's dragged her hands through it. This doesn't help at all.

"Hello, Mother," Beth says, trying for a smile.

Her mother raises her eyebrows as she looks them over. They're both mussed, and only dressed in the barest sense—Bethany's pinions are a bright shine on the floor, obviously hastily discarded, and Alistair's shirt might as well not exist at all. Oh, Maker, this cannot be happening—but this Leandra regards with no more interest than she'd pay to a Chantry sister begging alms.

"Hello, dear," she sighs. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. At least _you_ waited until you were alone, your sister was—well, she was something else. That girl, I don't know…"

This, if nothing else, is true.

"I—we weren't expecting you?" and if it comes out sounding like a question, that's because it is. Bethany hadn't even known this place existed—how on earth does her _mother_ know? She glances at Alistair, and he is a terrible liar even when he's not saying anything. The guilt is written all over him.

Oh, _well_ , that explains _that_.

"Well, I can see that," her mother says archly as her ice-blue gaze sweeps over them a second time, contemplative for long moments. Something flashes across her face, but Bethany can't say what it is; it's an emotion she doesn't have a name for, something deep and dark, forgotten in the halls between family and love. It's how her mother used to look at her father, Beth realizes, in the long days before he died when the coughing got so bad that there were always black-and-red-speckled rags to burn. It's the same thing, but it's gone before she can find the right word.

(It will come later; the emotion she's looking for is _devotion_. That's the one.)

Leandra's face turns terribly gentle, then, a calamity in reverse. "I think you two will be just fine. But Andraste. You told me it was small, Alistair, but I didn't think was going to be _this_ small! Three people in here is far too many, there won't be space to breathe. I'll just keep my things where they are, for now."

"Mother, no, it's—you'll be better here," Bethany says, face falling. She doesn't want her mother in the slums, doesn't want her to have to stare the waste of their entire family fortune in the face all the time. This place with its windows and its shutters is small, but at least it's not _that_.

There could be happiness here, if a person took the time to look for it.

Leandra laughs, actually laughs, a silver tinkle of merriment that Bethany hasn't heard in a very long time. Maybe Kirkwall won't be entirely terrible. "I'm not going to intrude on my child's first home. I doubt I'd get any sleep if I did! Look at you two, you've nearly ripped each other's clothes off, and you were alone for all of ten minutes! No, it won't do, I'll stay with Gamlen."

" _Mother_!" Bethany says, scandalized and getting redder with every passing second. She absolutely _can't_ look at Alistair right now because she thinks that if she does, she may very well burst into flames. She can still feel his hands, all over, everywhere. "It's not—!"

"It absolutely is, dear," Leandra says, reaches over to pat Bethany consolingly on the shoulder. "And someone ought to keep an eye on your siblings. I'm afraid they'll kill your uncle given half the chance."

"He's awful, Mother. Would you really blame them?" she asks, but the question is rhetorical and they both know it. Her mother's eyebrows rise ever higher while Bethany struggles with her shift. Stupid thing. It keeps slipping off her shoulder.

"I've asked them to behave like adults, so yes, I would," Leandra says lightly. She eyes them up and down again. It feels a little bit like being flayed alive, but also a little bit like approval. And there's warmth, there, the ice blue of her eyes crinkled up just enough to ease whatever bite her words might have had.

"Mother," Bethany says, biting at her lip, "are you sure?"

"Who else is going to keep your uncle from shaming the family name?"

Well, there isn't really any arguing that.

As Leandra's leaving, she turns to look at them over her shoulder.

"I'm not ready for grandchildren and neither are you two," she says, delicate. "So do try to be careful. If you need anything, ask your sister. I love you, dear, but I do _not_ want to know. Have a good evening!"

Bethany is too mortified to breathe, much less to sass her mother in reply.

And the door closes with a satisfied _click_.

"Well, that was terrible," Alistair says, at last. Neither of them have moved, entirely frozen in place. He's still staring at the ceiling like it's the most inoffensive thing he's seen all day. In all honesty, it probably is.

"Some help you were!" Bethany has to cover her face. Already she can feel bubbles of hysteria welling in her chest, hiccupping laughter about to bowl her over. She sinks to the floor, curls everywhere, shoulders already shaking. "Oh, Andraste, I'm so _sorry_ , I can't believe that that just—that my mother just—!"

"I see where your sister gets it," he says, awed. He shifts his weight a little, a nervous tick back and forth, glancing at her out of her corner of his eye. "Are you alright?"

Bethany laughs, shrugs her shoulders up and down like a crow because she's not sure _what_ she is, right now. She's a lot of things, but _alright_ isn't necessarily one of them—she's not even sure if alright necessarily _needs_ to be one of the things she is. It's not every day that a person's mother walks in on them, looks them up and down and doesn't even bother to tell them to put some clothes on. Is there a procedure for that? Is there a reaction that a person is _supposed_ to have, to that?

"I don't know," she says. "Are you?"

"Surprised I'm still alive, honestly," Alistair says. He flops down next to her, all wide shoulders and ruined shirt. It's oddly… _shy_ , somehow, the way he keeps his head down and won't look at her, red all the way up to his ears. She remembers the way he'd carried himself in the templar armour at the start, so unused to it, so awkward. He's still like that, now, but there's a quiet sort of acceptance to it. Like he's not so horrified by it, or maybe that he's so horrified by it he's circled back around to acquiescence.

"At least it wasn't Carver," Bethany sighs the words out. Her brother would have lost his tiny mind—maybe they should be _glad_ that it was just the Hawke matriarch, in the long run. Beth drops her head to rest against his collarbone. He slips his arm around her. It's almost a habit, and not even a bad one.

"He'd have killed me," Alistair says frankly.

"Probably," Bethany agrees, because, well, he's not wrong.

They sit there for a while, the thing that burned between them before cooled to embers. Bethany can still feel it in her chest but buried, now, calm. Even with his skin under her fingers, warm and alive, it's more comfortable to curl into his side and just breathe. This house is still not a home. It will be, when there's a bed and flowers on the table and something edible in the pantry, but for now it isn't, and this is easier.

If he kisses the top of her head like a secret—well, no one has to know.

—

Alistair comes home with smeary dark lines beneath his eyes, most days. When he closes the door behind him, he sheds the templar armour like a second skin. It becomes something of a ritual: helmet first every single time, sets it facing towards the wall to keep the slit eye holes from seeming too much like the Chantry has its nose pressed against their door. Then gauntlets, greaves, and chest plate: always in that order. It's a deconstruction, and Bethany knows that it's something he does to remind himself that he's not whoever his superiors want him to be.

She waits with her back turned, the only privacy they can really afford.

"How was your day?" she asks when his arms finally slip around her and he steps up to drop his chin to the top of her head. The shudder that goes through him at the sound of her voice nearly has her turning around, but these potatoes aren't going to peel themselves, and if she turns around now, no one's going to eat tonight.

(Well, that's not strictly true. While they might not be able to afford _each other_ very much privacy, privacy from everyone else is something they have in spades. And the walls are very thick; sound doesn't travel well through stone. Bethany can smile and look her neighbours in the eye in the morning without flushing herself to death, thank Andraste.)

"I hate that place," Alistair mutters darkly. He buries his face in her hair, breathes her in. "That's not a Circle, that's a _prison_. Maker, it makes me miss Lothering. I never thought I'd see the day."

"What did the Knight-Commander do _now_?" Beth has to ask. Her fingers have gone pruney in the cool clear water she's got the potatoes in to soak, and she has to concentrate on them very hard because he's idly rubbing circles into her hip. "The last time you sounded like this, she'd just demoted Ser Thrask…"

That had been a bad day. They both owe Ser Thrask more than words can ever say, and it had shaken them both when the Knight-Commander had made the decision. They'd clung to each other for a very long time that night, trying to get themselves back in one piece, whispering soft soothing things: _it's alright_ and _I've got you_ and _we're safe, we're safe, we're safe_.

Now, Alistair just sighs, mouth against her skin. "We have a new Knight-Captain."

Bethany goes very still. There are too many templars in Kirkwall to know every one, and it still makes her sick to her stomach that she can't always know when exactly to run and hide. "Oh?"

"From Kinloch," he says, shaking his head ruefully. "There was… something happened there, but they won't tell us what. I think he's younger than I am. It's madness."

"What's he like?" she asks, at length, after she's swallowed back the bile. It's not a logical question, but it's the only one that doesn't make her want to be as ill as she was on that stupid ship. She picks up another potato, and the knife is steady in her hands.

"Very quiet," Alistair says. He watches her peel, one long perfect spiral of skin. Bethany doesn't remember when she learned to do that, doesn't remember when she stopped leaving bits and pieces of peel everywhere. Maybe it's a growing-up sort of thing. "I can help, if you want. Do you want me to do anything?"

"No," she says. It's not that he's useless at it; Alistair grew up somewhere between a stable and a kitchen, and she's not surprised that the lessons in the kitchen stuck: it was warmer, there. "Not today. Just—stay, alright? Don't go anywhere."

"Where would I go?" he teases, but she must go tense because the teasing falls away and a quiet earnestness takes its place. Alistair carefully takes the knife out of her hand, leaves it to clatter in the tub, and turns her around at last.

"I don't know," Bethany says. She stares at his shirt. There's a hole in the seam where sleeve meets shoulder; she's going to have to fix that. "Somewhere else?"

"After I went to all the trouble of convincing your brother that I wasn't going to turn you in the minute we stepped off that boat?" he says, a funny little smile on his face as he looks down at her, and he reaches out so gently to tuck a curl behind her ear. An imprint of the touch lingers: ghost fingers through her hair, on her cheek, faint warmth there and then not.

"It would be easier," Bethany says, voice small. She knows it's true—it's not easy, can't be, walking through the Gallows and knowing every single minute of every single day that anytime anyone asks about her, he has to lie about it. She can't help wondering if…

But Alistair's shaking his head, slowly like he can't believe he even has to say this aloud. "Easier? No, Miss Hawke, I don't think so. I'm sorry to say that you're stuck with me. I got lucky when you decided to put up with me, so now I'm never going anywhere without you ever again. Who's to say you'll take me back if I do?"

"Please don't tease," she whispers. She's horrified to find tears sloshing on the inside of her eyelids, and she blinks them away. This is _absolutely_ not the time.

"I'm being serious, Beth," Alistair says. He tips her chin up, stares at her straight. There's nothing but a dead kind of stillness there, none of the mischievousness and light that she's come to expect from him anywhere in his face, and she thinks: _oh_.

_Oh_ , he is being serious. _Oh_ , he means it. _Oh_ , he's not going anywhere.

_Oh_.

"There you are," he says, a careful grin breaking across his face. It crinkles his eyes up. She wants to run her fingers over the lines, and while she's thinking about that, he continues: "Is this going to happen a lot?"

"Probably," Bethany says, the littlest bit apologetic. She drops her forehead to his collarbone, tries to breathe around the clog of tears in her nose. "Sorry. I'm not very good at this."

"Don't be," Alistair says. He loops himself around her, props his chin against the top of her head. There's a distance part of her that notes that this is very comfortable, and she'd not mind staying here for the rest of eternity. "I'm not very good at it, either."

"We can be not-good at it together," Bethany says. It feels a little bit like bravery, that shimmering frontier: brilliant and wretched in equal measure, and so very, very scary. She's not sure—will never be sure—which one of them reaches out first, but they do. In the stillness, the end of the day leaking in golden and sleepy, they could be anyone. Anyone at all.

They could be normal, for once.

"I think he should meet you," Alistair says, a long time later. They've migrated into the room where probably one day there will be a bed; for now, it's as bare as the rest of the place. There's a mattress stuffed with straw on the floor, and that's good enough.

"Who?" Bethany blinks up at him from where she's curled into his side. It's been such a long day and there are tear tracks on her cheeks, a constellation of _how much_ and _never enough_. She's probably red and blotchy all over; she's not a pretty crier, Bethany, but she can't imagine anyone is. _So attractive_ , she can hear her sister say. Marian always did have a flare for the dramatic.

"Our new Knight-Captain," he says.

She thinks about this for a moment that seems to go on forever. "That might be the worst idea either of us have ever had, and I'm including anything related to my sister in that."

"Might be," Alistair agrees readily enough. "But I still think he should meet you."

"Have I told you recently how much I really do not ever want to go to the Gallows? Because I think telling the Knight-Captain about your apostate—"

"Maker, no!" he yelps, eyes wide. "We're not going to _tell_ him! Are you mad?"

"Are _you_?"

"No," Alistair expels a very heavy breath. There's a lot of things in it, all of them jagged and broken-glass sharp. She thinks she can hear the gouges they left in him when he speaks, oddly hoarse and crumbling like there's blood in his teeth. "But I think I could have been him or he could have been me, if things had been different. I wasn't—when I said I was lucky you liked me, I wasn't lying."

"What do you mean?"

"They were going to send me to Kinloch," Alistair says, closes his eyes for a second longer than a standard blink. He's all gold in the light through the window, as dusty here as it ever was in Lothering. "I almost went."

"Why didn't you go?" she asks, but she thinks she already knows the answer to that.

"Because you let me pet your dog. You'd ignored me for weeks no matter what I did to get your attention, but you finally smiled when you let me pet your dog. You were—" he stops, throat clicking, "—you had the prettiest smile I'd ever seen, and you were… different. Good. So I didn't leave, because I thought…"

_Because I thought maybe we could be good, too_ , he doesn't say. Bethany can hear it anyway. It hangs in the air around them with the sunset and the dust motes. Truth is always best when it's silent.

"You never said," she murmurs. She presses her face into his chest. His heart _thuds_ right next to her ear, fast as wind, solid as stone. There's magic all through Alistair, she thinks, whether he can touch it or not. Maybe that's why he's such a good templar. Maybe that's why he's also such a terrible templar.

"Never seemed like a good time," he says. He's running his hands through her curls, and she knows it's more to calm himself than anything else. The thought of other futures is a scary one; one pebble in a river to divert it a different way and who knows, she might be dead. Or he could be dead. Or—anything, really. Anything. "But that's—that's why. It could have been me."

"I nearly talked to you three times before then," Bethany says. _A secret for a secret_ , she thinks. It's a fair trade, and no one else is ever going to know.

"Really?" he asks. She can hear startled, pleased surprise. "Why didn't you?"

Bethany laughs soundlessly, face still buried in his chest. She doesn't need to see to paint the air around them sparkling: sunshine off water, pink-prick stars, healing. She's glad the shutters are closed, because it's beautiful, and just about as hard to ignore.

"Oh, yes," he says, like he's just remembered who and what they are. "That."

"Yes, _that_ ," she says. "I broke every single one of my own rules to talk to you, you know. You had to go and be _kind_. How was I supposed to resist that?"

"Maker, I'm glad you didn't," he says fervently. But then he turns somber, pulls back enough that they're not nearly melded together and he can look at her, gaze tracing across the planes of her face. Sometimes Bethany wonders what he sees that makes this all worth it. She wonders if it's anything like what she sees when she looks at him.

They simply look at each other for a very long moment.

"So," Alistair says, trying for the lightness that comes with discussing the weather and not possibly putting her freedom at stake. It falls a little flat, but she appreciates the effort. "What do you think?"

The problem, of course, is that Bethany understands perfectly. It's the same reason that she goes to help Lirene out in the shop whenever she has a free moment; the urge to save people from themselves is universal, it seems.

Her shoulders drop as she exhales. "I think _you_ get to tell my sister. She'll be thrilled."

"Do we _have_ to tell her?" Alistair asks.

He's gone a little pale, and Bethany has to stifle a giggle. "Do you _want_ to listen to her rant about how irresponsible we are for weeks afterwards? Because I don't. And, well… If nothing else, she's quite good at making people disappear."

"That she is," he says, eyes glazing over. He winces at whatever he's remembering—probably it's her sister versus the Witch of the Wilds, because only Marian Hawke could sass an actual, _literal myth_ and live to tell the tale, that's always a good one to wince about—but then he comes back. He touches her: wrist, elbow, ribs. "We don't have to."

"But you want to," Bethany says. It's not a question.

"Yeah," Alistair says, so quietly. "I do."

"Okay," she says, draws in a great lungful of air. It's fortification for what comes next. "So. How is this going to work?"

It's a good question. _How is this going to work_ becomes something of a mantra between them, about everything. _How is this going to work_ , when Alistair is sometimes so exhausted that it's all Bethany can do to get him into bed and let him sleep the Gallows off. _How is this going to work_ , when her sister and her twin come crashing in through the door, bleeding and broken and leading a merry band of mercenaries who eat most of that week's groceries and all wear red steel like it's going out of style. _How is this going to work_ , when Bethany accidentally touches the mana-drain cuffs that are standard to every templar's uniform and the shock that comes off them sends her into a fit of shakes so awful she can't hold a tea cup.

_How is this going to work_ , when everything about it is such a fundamentally bad idea?

But they manage.

It's a lot of work, but autumn is different in Kirkwall—in Lothering, everyone would be gearing up for harvest season, hoping that the end of summer would be kind, that the frost wouldn't come too early and kill the crops before threshing—if only because being so close to the Waking Sea keeps the shortening days warm. Lowtown bustles late into the day, vendors hawking wares almost past when the sun goes down. Nothing's slowed at all; it's like the people in Kirkwall aren't even aware that the cold months are coming.

For all Bethany knows, maybe they aren't.

Kirkwall is a very strange place.

But this is how Bethany Hawke ends up with two templars in her kitchen, one sunny evening in Kingsway, three months after slip-sliding their way into Kirkwall's white stone. Alistair comes home with an arm of groceries, whistling loudly enough that Bethany could hear him halfway up the street. Her eyes go wide and her breath goes short, and she scrambles to her feet because oh, Maker, there is a problem.

For all that they'd planned this, there is one wild card in the tarot deck of Bethany's life that is _always_ bound to make a mess of things.

And that wild card decided that today would be a _perfectly_ lovely day to crash through her sister's door to cheerfully demand an update on Bethany's life and some supper, thank you very much, you ought to be glad I didn't bring Carver!

(Andraste, none of Bethany's family has any _tact_.)

Marian Hawke is sitting at the kitchen table with half a roll of day-old bread stuffed into her mouth. She's been steadily chewing her way through all the expired food in the pantry for the last fifteen minutes and, despite Bethany's very best efforts, _has not left yet_.

"Mari, please," Bethany says, shaking her curls out. "Can't you come back… later? Tomorrow?"

"I wasn't planning on it, but I think I can pen you in," Marian says, fluttering her lashes. The roll is still in her mouth. She grins around it, teeth a bright shine as they dig in. "Excited to see your princeling? Why, Bethy, I had _no_ idea, am I going to be an aunt anytime—?"

" _Marian_!" Bethany says, gone blotchy. "It's not _like_ that!"

Her sister raises an eyebrow, and for a moment, she looks so much like their mother that it's almost frightening. It's in the eyes, the quirked little smile. "Are you sure? Because Mother says it's like that, and I'm inclined to believe her—"

The door swings inwards, and Bethany has never in her life been so glad to see Alistair's grin.

"Hi," Bethany says, soft and sweet and just for him because she can't help herself. She has to stand on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek, and it's an alright cover to whisper in his ear. "My sister came to say hello."

"Our lives," Alistair says, closes his eyes for a second longer than a standard blink, "are a mess. We didn't want to tell her, so here she is. Of course."

"Sometimes I think she does things like this just to be contrary," Bethany sighs.

(Marian, behind them, waves cheerfully like she knows exactly what they're whispering about.)

Alistair mutters something unintelligible into her hair. Fusses with his gauntlets. Fusses with her scarf. Fusses. "Too much company. We should run away while we have the chance."

"Didn't we already do that?" Bethany asks. She's very tempted to wrap herself around him, arms around neck, head tucked into throat, but that would probably be counterproductive. They have company, too much company, and Marian isn't kind enough to let things lie.

"I'm beginning to think facing the darkspawn might have been easier," Alistair grimaces. He reaches up to brush a thumb across her cheek bone, but stops halfway through. Gauntlets. Cold metal against skin. And neither of them are all that fond of the templar armour, anyway. The hand drops away, and instead he bends to kiss her, very softly.

Bethany flushes, ducks her head shyly.

(She's never going to get over that, is she.)

"Maybe," she says, cheeks still burning. "Open to negotiation, at least. But—" she breaks off to tip her head in her sister's direction, "—family first?"

"Family first," Alistair agrees. "And then everything else."

They slip inside, tucked into the curls of each other's bodies, a perfect pair of closed parenthesis.

"Could you two be any more disgusting?" Marian asks. She's finished her roll, and is clearly searching for another one. "What am I saying, of course you could. Continue."

"We love you, too, Mari," Bethany says. The _clink_ of Alistair's gauntlets hitting the table is the best sound. The familiar cadence of removal washes away the anxiety of breaking all the rules, and she can feel her shoulders unknotting.

So her sister is here when she shouldn't be. As if it's anything new; sometimes it seems like the world doesn't move unless Marian Hawke is there to force it forwards.

The sun comes in through the window in thick orange slats, liquid and heavy.

Bethany has time for one deep breath of calm.

And then, oh, there's that knock.

"There you are, I was beginning to wonder if Meredith had shoved more work at you and you weren't going to come, after all," Alistair opens the door with a flourish and a ridiculous grin. "You wanted proof? Well, here. Beth, this is Ser Cullen."

Ser Cullen is a tall man with pale hair near as curly as Bethany's own is. He's a solemn man with a solemn face, very pale, wearing the dark smears beneath his eyes that come from too little sleep—they are, in fact, a near mirror for the ones that Alistair comes home with some days. But these look older, deeper; Maker, he looks like he hasn't slept a day in his life—and too little sunlight. There's a nick in his lip, long-healed.

He looks, Bethany thinks, like he's forgotten how to be happy.

"Hello," she smiles like sunshine to cover the churn of her magic in her stomach. She can practically _hear_ Marian's jaw click as it drops. "I'm Bethany."

"I _told_ you she's real," Alistair says, not a little bit smug. He tucks himself around her still grinning like a child in a candy shop, kisses the top of her head. Beth likes him _so much_ ; she must, else she'd not be here. "And you didn't believe me."

Ser Cullen has the audacity to roll his eyes. "Is it my fault that I can't imagine any sane woman wanting to marry you? I'm sorry, that was rude. I'm pleased to meet you, Miss—"

"Hawke," Marian says coolly, eyes dancing as she cuts in, because of course she cuts in, she has no _tact_. She slips in between them and it's such a natural movement that if you didn't know her, you'd think she wasn't, in fact, placing herself between anyone at all. She's no warrior, but she knows how to be a shield. "It's Hawke. Oh, you're _cute_ , aren't you? Alistair, you never told me you had such adorable friends! I would have broken into the Gallows a long time ago if you had."

The templar goes hard all over, tight lines around his eyes, jaw held so tight it might break. Alistair was right—he isn't much older than Bethany is, certainly not older than Marian. And there's something hollow in him that only gets hollower as he stares at Bethany's sister.

To the horror of everyone present, with the notable exception of Marian herself, he starts to turn red.

"Solona?" he asks, very quietly. "What are you—they sent you to the Aeonar, how are you— _why_ are you—?"

Marian tilts her head at him. She's beautiful, is Bethany's sister, beautiful like a girl in a painting. All of her is sharp classical features, bright eyes and soft mouth beneath a feathery crown of dark hair; she is beautiful, but she is cruel.

And this is no different. Marian did always see the things people hate about themselves most clearly.

"You poor bastard," she says, mouth curling at the edges. Her eyes glint slow and cold and _mean_ beneath her fringe. "You went and fell in love with a mage, didn't you? Is that why they sent her to the Aeonar? Maker, I wouldn't wish that place on anyone, it's a misery."

The colour drains out of Ser Cullen, entire.

"Ah," he says.

Bethany thinks that he might need to sit down, but her sister's already reaching out to ruffle his hair exactly like she does to Carver when he's being grouchy. Marian looks at him, and the cruelty ebbs away into nothing. "I didn't mean it like that. I'm sure your mage is fine."

"You look just like her," Ser Cullen says, face ashen.

"I look like a lot of people," Marian says, batting her eyes. Her gaze slides off him like liquid, and that's how Bethany knows her sister's already dismissed any threat this boy could pose. She'd never look away from a templar she didn't trust. "Just one of those faces. It is spectacular, isn't it?"

Ser Cullen doesn't say anything, but then, he might not say anything ever again. It's a fair reaction to Bethany's sister, most days.

"Mari, don't you have somewhere better to be?" Bethany asks, softly. She glances at Alistair out of the corner of her eye. He shrugs helplessly, and she thinks: _how is this going to work? How are we going to make this work_?

"Oh, probably," her sister says, waving a hand through the air like she doesn't care, but that's not it at all. She looks at Bethany, her gaze level and promising an incredible lecture at the first opportunity. _One templar is more than enough_ , Bethany can already hear, _but two? Two? Maker's balls, if you really have such a death wish, you could just ask me! I'd make it painless, at least_. "I'll see you tomorrow, Bethy. Try not to get into too much trouble."

And with that, she swans out of the door.

The room seems to echo for a long time after she's gone.

"Would you like a cup of tea?" Alistair asks. There's not much else to say in the wake of the silence that Marian's exit has left. That's not a particularly new thing, but for someone unused to the eldest Hawke's _everything_ , it can be a little overwhelming. He silently offers Ser Cullen a chair.

"I—" Ser Cullen swallows, takes the offered seat. He stares down at his gauntleted hands. "Yes. Please."

Without another word, Bethany heads to the pantry for the tea, and Alistair goes to put the kettle on to boil.

It's going to be a very long night.

—

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_tbc_.


	3. down to the floor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes, we all know who alistair's actual mother is, but alistair doesn't. also, f!hawke/isabela is the otp so that's a thing.  
> basically: join me in the garbage <3

—

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Autumn chills to winter and winter fades to spring, the bitter edges of 9:30 smudging into peeping lilac crocuses pushing up through the sand between soft green ferns and crimson embrium flowers along the edges of the Wounded Coast. The thirty-first year of the Dragon Age creeps in undemanding and slow as goose feathers: Bethany splits her time between patching Marian and Carver up when they come to visit with their knuckles bruised bloody, and keeping the dark circles beneath Alistair's eyes from getting any darker.

Suddenly, it's Cloudreach, and it's been a whole year since they left Lothering behind.

"Meeran's trying to convince us to stay on," Marian says, tearing through a roll of slightly-stale bread with her teeth. It's a Tuesday, and Bethany's siblings are crowded around the rickety table in the middle of the kitchen picking over the leftovers from the evening meal. They come, sometimes; Marian to eat all of the food, and Carver to glower threateningly at Alistair every chance he gets.

Bethany's twin snorts. His hair's gotten shaggy, beginning to curl thick and black. He looks the most like Mother of all the Hawke siblings, Carver does. Same mouth, same eyes. Same smile, even, but Beth can't remember the last time she saw him smile. "Not likely."

Marian flicks her fingers at him, dismissal in the gesture. "I never said we would, dearest. Indentured servitude doesn't pay very well, as we've learned!"

Bethany watches the way Carver's jaw goes tight when her sister says _we_. Everything about him goes tight, really: jaw, shoulders, fists. Marian's shadow is a long stretched thing, and no matter how tall Carver gets, he's certain he's never going to be tall enough to escape it. Somehow, they're always getting worse. Bethany can't stay in the middle of it, because there have been days where she's been sick to her stomach from trying to keep the peace and when it doesn't work, _she's_ the one who ends the day with dark circles around the eyes. Those nights Alistair has to be steady enough for the both of them, and it's not fair because no one comes out of the Gallows alright.

(Especially not Alistair. He comes home shaking and presses his face into her hair until he regains the ability to make his lungs work. He really is the worst templar Bethany has ever met.)

It's a fine line to walk, but Maker's breath, she wishes they weren't like this. Life is hard enough.

Bethany's about to say something, but a bare arm curls around her waist, solidly warm and so much _better_ than trying to head her siblings off. She sinks into it like water into sand.

"Why are they always _here_?" Alistair mutters grumpily into her ear. "Your brother's glaring at me."

Bethany smothers a grin, whispers, "He's always glaring at you."

"I'm not even doing anything," he says. He's scruffy, bristly-ticklish against her skin, and it's enough to have Bethany giggling and squirming away.

"It's not what you're doing, it's what you're _going_ to do. Would you _quit_ that?!" Carver snaps. He's on his feet, hands balled into fists. He's too big for this place, such a biting fury. There's a muscle jumping in his jaw; he stares at them like he wants to rend the world apart.

Bethany refuses to look away: she juts her chin out and squares her shoulders with Alistair at her back because even though Carver is her twin, he doesn't get to tell her what to do or how to do it or who to make a life with. They're both stubborn about everything, and this is no different. It's Lothering all over again, but what _isn't_ Lothering all over again?

"That's it, that's enough, I'm pulling rank. Carver," Marian says, "sit down."

And Carver sits.

Slowly, jerkily, but he sits.

"Bethy, you too," the eldest Hawke says.

And Bethany sits.

Slowly. Jerkily. But she sits.

And Marian just looks mildly at Alistair until he settles down in the last seat, awkward and sheepish with it. She doesn't deign to even say anything because an unwavering gaze is sometimes the best weapon in any person's arsenal; for a minute, she lets them stew. Certainly it is, now, and the scrape of wooden chair against stone floor is loud in all their ears.

"I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that you're still on about this. Maker's balls, Carver, it's a been a year. Alistair's had plenty of chances to tell the templars about Bethy because he _is_ one, but he _hasn't_ , so you're going to let this go and stop being such a tit," Marian says. Bethany has to pretend very hard that she doesn't feel entirely vindicated. It only lasts about a minute, because then her sister turns that ice-blue gaze on her, eyes narrowing.

It's unnerving, to say the least.

"And you two—" she looks pointedly between Bethany and Alistair, "—need to tone it down when you've company! You have a bedroom, and we all know what's what. I like my supper where it is, thanks, and not all over the table. I hardly get enough to eat as it is."

Marian crosses her arms over her chest, leans back a little to survey them, frowning a little. "Do you understand? I'm not paid enough to keep sorting you out—I'm not paid anything at all, incidentally, but we're working on that—and congratulations, children, each other is all we have—" and here Bethany's sister pauses to wrinkle her nose, "—well, there's Mother, too, but not Uncle Gamlen because he's awful. So. Thoughts?"

No one says anything. They all feel very much like scolded children. Beth finds Alistair's hands beneath the table, and holds on tight.

"Maker's breath," Marian sighs like she can't believe this is something she even has to say. Really, she shouldn't be surprised; usually, she's the worst of the lot. "Can we at least agree that we'll try not to commit familicide and bring the entire guard down on our heads in the process? Aveline would never let me live it down and I don't want to deal with that, she'll be smug forever."

Bethany reflects that her sister does have, if nothing else, a very unique way of putting things into perspective. And Aveline _would_ be smug forever if they all ended up killing one another. She'd bring them back from the dead just to yell, honestly.

"Fine," Bethany says. Alistair's fingers tighten, release, tighten, release. Like a metronome. Like a heartbeat.

"Good," says Marian. "That's enough excitement for one day. Shall we, little brother? I'm sure Mother's just _dying_ to chastise us for being out so late."

He grumbles something that might be assent. Marian jumps up, always too much energy to spare, and begins to herd Carver towards the door. Bethany gets up to walk them out, and Alistair starts cleaning up the dishes. It's a practised call-and-reply, except that there's no call.

They've gotten quite good at this living-together thing.

"Beth, I'm—" Carver starts.

"No," Bethany says. Marian's already outside, and it almost feels like privacy. She looks up at him, frowning. "I'm mad at you, and I don't want to talk to you right now. Go away, Carver."

And she pushes him outside, and slams the door right in his face.

—

The next morning, after Alistair's headed to the Gallows for the day and Bethany's trying to figure out just what on earth she's going to do for supper when the pantry is nearly bare, someone knocks. It's early, still, early enough that the sun's barely full in the sky.

Which is strange. She'd not been expecting anyone, not really, but maybe Merrill or Mother, if Marian's not dragged them off somewhere mad as she's wont to do—

But it's neither Mother _nor_ Merrill.

It's Carver. Of course.

"Did you just _knock_?" Bethany asks, pulling open the door to stare at him.

Her twin rolls his weight from foot to foot, grumpy as usual, but somehow also oddly… sheepish. Carver's shoulders hunch up around his ears. "Mar's the one without manners," he says, "not me. Can I come in?"

"Are you going to insult Alistair, again?" she asks, voice cool. Her knuckles are white around the door. She hates fighting with Carver, hates it, hates it, hates it. It twists all her insides up until she doesn't even feel like herself, anymore. "Or are you going to be civil? Because if you're here to be rude about him, you can just leave. I don't want to hear it."

Carver grumbles something unintelligible.

"What was that?"

"M'sorry," he says again, a little louder. He… slumps, that's the word. He slumps and looks at her with tired eyes, fringe a sad little _flop_ across his forehead. It's pathetic. "I was being an ass."

"You really were," Bethany says, but she can feel the last threads of her stubbornness drifting away. She can never stay angry at Carver; she doesn't even know how. "I'm not an idiot. I can make my own decisions."

"I know," says Carver.

"Just—don't do it again," she says, and stands aside to let him in.

The guilty way he shuffles on the way inside is enough to cut the rest of her indignation loose. It floats away like dandelion seeds on the breeze, light and meaningless. Bethany sighs and reaches over to hug him.

"I really am sorry," Carver mutters. His arms come up to hug her back a little too tight. Her bones creak beneath the pressure, but it's fine. In the end, he's her twin, and the thought of living without him is one that Bethany doesn't like to contemplate for too long because it makes her want to set things on fire.

"I know," she tells him with a sigh. "That doesn't make it alright."

Carver nods, and lets her go.

There's nothing symbolic about it, but there probably should be.

Bethany swallows down the lump in her throat and finds a smile somewhere in the depths of her chest to paste on. It only hurts a little bit, but the sharp hard lines of Carver's face soften, and it's good enough. She nudges him with her elbow. "So what did Mar do now to send you running out of Uncle Gamlen's house on your own?"

Carver rolls his eyes. "Funny you should mention our uncle."

"What about him?"

He scrubs a hand through his hair. It's a frustrated gesture left over from when they were children and Marian used to cheerfully wrap an arm around his neck to force him into things that he didn't want to do. After whatever it was that their elder sister wanted was over, Carver would invariably try to fix himself while he grumbled himself to death. The return of it makes Bethany smile a little helplessly. A little sadly, too. Nothing ever really changes, even when everything does.

"Mother wants to see the will," he says, blowing out a grouchy breath. "And he doesn't have it."

"Grandfather's will? Where is it?"

"In the estate vault," he says.

Well, that makes no sense, and Bethany says as much. "Why is it there?"

"I don't know," Carver says, and he scrubs his hand through his hair a second time. "Mar wants to go find it, she's found some way into the basement through Darktown. We're going as soon as Mother finishes lecturing, but I thought… do you want to come?"

"Will you be awful if Alistair comes, too?"

"Does he _have_ to?"

"He's as much a part of this as you are," Bethany says firmly, setting her jaw. She can feel the fight rising in her stomach, and she tries to tamp it down at least a little. There's no point in going off. "You know he is."

"I wish he wasn't," her twin grouses beneath his breath. When she glares at him, he only looks a little bit contrite, but it's better than the unrepentant fury from before. "I'm not going to be able to stop you, so I'm not going to try."

"Good," Bethany says. "You're learning."

He's not learning, not really, because she knows that he's always going to have problems with her relationship with Alistair. That's how Carver is; he fights and fights and fights a thing until it simply assimilates into the rest of his experience, just another thorny thing to be resentful about.

He's trying, though.

Bethany can't ask for more than that.

They pass the afternoon in the quiet. Carver stretches out on the floor in the patch of sunlight streaming through the window and closes his eyes, which is just like him, isn't it. There's work to be done because there's always work to be done, but living in a city is different than living on a farm. There's no animals to tend to, and she's already watered the little pots of medicinal herbs that grow on the windowsill. In some ways, Kirkwall is static: with her brother here, Bethany isn't about to go wandering through Lowtown's market just to listen to the wash of voices the way she normally does. The books Marian's filched on her runs for Meeran are stacked in a corner, most well-thumbed, and all read more than once.

Bethany and Alistair spent a lot of winter evenings curled up together reading as rain pounded against the shutters. It had been a learning winter; learning each other, mostly, and Marian's penchant for dropping by with a book or two while drenched in other people's blood was both worrying and somehow incredibly sweet. Even now, it's still something she tends to do, if only because she knows that reading is something they both legitimately enjoy.

Once in a while, Marian Hawke isn't absolutely the worst.

Then again, that very much depends on who you talk to.

Because not ten minutes after having this thought, Bethany's older sister comes waltzing cheerfully through the door, dragging Alistair behind her. She's got a black eye, bruise purpling over a split lip and bloodied knuckles. Beth doesn't want to ask who she got into a fight with, now: whoever it was is likely dead. Marian doesn't really know the meaning of _restraint_.

"Look who I found!" she announces to the whole room. There's still blood between her teeth. "I told you they'd both be here, you ought to believe me more often. I'm always right."

"You are not," says Carver, immediately sitting up to glare sleepily at their elder sister. Bethany could have sworn he was asleep a second ago. She's also not wrong; until the very second Marian came tumbling through the door with Alistair in tow, Carver _was_ asleep. He just has a nose for these things, because where there is Marian Hawke, there is always a trail of carnage. It's rather sickening, when you think about it.

"So you've forgiven him, I see," Marian says blithely, ignoring Carver completely. "Wonderful, that makes this much easier. You're going to come on our adventure, then?"

"Why are you _like_ this," Carver moans into the floor.

"Because someone has to be," Marian says. She claps her hands, a sharp crack of sound that echoes off the walls. "So, shall we? That will isn't going to wait, and I would _so_ love to ruin Uncle Gamlen's day. Oh, what are you doing, don't take your armour off, you're coming as well."

Alistair blinks, halfway into pulling one of his gauntlets off like _who, me_?

 _Yes, you_ , says Marian's cheerfully bared teeth.

And that's that.

They go.

It's been a long time since they've fought together. Having her staff slung across her shoulder is a comforting weight. Bethany had forgotten how good it feels, having something to help focus the magic. And they're well-suited to each other, really; Marian leads and kills from the shadows, Carver throws himself into the thick of the fighting, and Alistair places himself firmly between Beth herself and anything pointy as might come her way.

Darktown is rank even in the dead of winter. This early in the spring is no different, and there's no colour here. The poorest of the poor spend their days in this place: Darktown's inhabitants are a mix of Ferelden refugees, elves, and anyone else so down on their luck that they have nowhere else to go. They huddle in little groups around fires lit in the shallow-dug holes, oft burnt down to nothing but embers. Bethany hides in the dull gleam of Alistair's armour, in the shadow of Carver's shoulders, in Marian's killer smile, and still doesn't feel safe for a minute.

They swing down a flight of stairs and over a stream so polluted it looks like sludge, around a bend and down through the twisty half-baked hivemind tunnels to the very darkest places in Kirkwall, so far away from sunshine and light that nothing could ever survive. The air is thick as mud.

"Here," she says. Marian's face is very still. They're standing in front of a collapsed mining hatch, the decayed wood barely holding it together. It looks like a heart attack or maybe an abomination, stretched out and made unreal over time. "We're going through here."

"We're going to _die_ is what we are," Carver says, eyeing the thing with trepidation.

"Shut it," Marian says. She doesn't take her gaze off the tunnel's entrance, and her eyes are like iced lyrium, burning with cold. "Stay here, if you want. I'll go alone. Keep Bethy out of trouble while I'm gone, templar."

She disappears into the gloom without another word, and doesn't look back.

Carver and Bethany and Alistair follow her, because what else is there?

And so down they go, down into a murky sunless sea lit only by the white fire that blooms from Bethany's hands. The wall shine slickly with condensation. This was an old smuggling tunnel, had to have been, it's too well-trod to be anything else. Bethany draws a breath, feeds more mana into the flames so that the light throws the path ahead into high relief. It turns upwards, the incline weird and steep until it levels off into a set of stairs hewn roughly into the rock. And then—

"Of course it's slavers," Marian yanks her dagger out of a cooling corpse. "It's always slavers, I'm going to kill our uncle, Maker take his blasted soul."

"Is everyone alright?" Bethany asks. She doesn't speak very loudly; something about this panelled-wood basement gives her the willies, and she doesn't want to stay here longer than they have to. Marian's gone off to investigate another room because at her heart, Marian Hawke is a treasure-hunter with a taste for thrills and she's hungry, always hungry. The drive to feed that hunger is never-ending.

"Fine," Alistair says, quiet. He tucks her into the safety of his side, setting his armour and his shield and his whole self between her and the world. "Are you?"

Bethany shudders, but she nods. "I'll be better once we're out of here."

And isn't that the truth.

"Slavers," Carver mutters darkly. They've cleaned out two rooms, fought their way through three dozen men and a truly offensive number of traps, and they're all starting to get tired. Bethany can feel the shake in her magic. Tomorrow is going to be a painful recovery. "I _hate_ slavers."

Bethany can't say she blames him. She's thankful Fenris isn't here to see this; he doesn't do well when there are slavers involved, and Bethany understands. Maker knows, she understands.

Slavers are easy to hate.

But it's a hop, skip, jump up a flight of stairs into the Amell vault. They file upwards, away from the stink of blood and mire, into a colourless little room full of forgotten things.

There are a pile of books in one corner, though, and that's where Bethany's sister heads.

"Naughty, naughty, Uncle Gamlen," Marian murmurs, lips curling up into a pleased smile, smug as a cat. She shuffles through the sheaves of paper as Bethany watches. There are other things in the vault—Carver's poking at an armoire in the corner, at a sack embroidered with the Amell crest, at a pair of crates. Alistair stays close, and that's very nice—but it's Marian who simply stands and reads for a long, long time.

"Well," she says, at long last. "I think we have what we came for. Shall we go, then?"

Marian steps over the bodies of the dead slavers on the way out. She doesn't look back; there's sunlight somewhere out there, and dead slavers are only par for the course in Marian Hawke's life. Bethany's twin and Alistair follow her, careful only to avoid the blood on the floor.

Dead slavers do not deserve respect.

Bethany thinks of the Gallows, and hurries to catch up.

—

"I have a proposition for you," Marian says, one day in early Bloomingtide. Sunlight filters in warm and bright; it's not quite the solstice, but the days are getting so long. Bethany's sister lounges with her feet up on the table, examining her nails, and this is how she knows that whatever it is her sister is about to ask, it's important.

(It's just how Marian is. The more imperative a thing, the more nonchalant about it she acts. Sometimes, Bethany wishes she would be a little more normal, but of course not. Caring is only a disease when people know you have something to lose.)

"I hate it when you say that," Bethany sighs.

"No, you don't. You'd be bored to death without me," Marian grins at her. She flicks her fingers, and waits.

"I'd be something," Bethany says under her breath, but straightens. Her spine _cracks_ sickly; it's been happening a lot recently. The sound makes her flinch. "What are you planning now?"

"You wound me, Bethy," Marian says, eyes glinting. "I'm not _planning_ anything!"

"You're always planning something," Bethany retorts, and her sister doesn't look offended because it's true. Whether it's ways to break out of the Gallows or figuring out how to fleece half of Hightown out of its' coin, her sister is always planning _something_. "If there are going to be templars, the answer is no. I get enough of that at home."

"Ser Cullen's been by, then? If I didn't know better I'd say he was courting your templar, but really I think he's actually that lonely," Marian says, amused. "It's a pity, he'd be halfway decent without all the Chantry nonsense. Templars. Can't live with them, can't kill them without getting into all sorts of trouble."

Bethany doesn't deign to reply to that. There's no point. "That doesn't answer the question, you know."

"Want to go for a walk with me, tonight?"

"A walk? Why?"

Marian considers her for a long moment. She usually sits like she's six years old and angry at their mother, all too-slouched shoulders, but now she sits up and props her chin up with her hands, elbows on the table. "I want to follow up on something Varric was talking about, and I could use the company. Alistair, too, if he'd like. The more, the merrier."

Bethany goes very still.

It's not often that Marian asks for help. It's even rarer that she invites Alistair along.

Oh, Maker, what has sister gotten into _now_?

"What about Carver?" Bethany asks, careful.

Her sister's lips twitch. She looks exactly like she did before Gwaren, sass like the Witch of the Wilds hadn't just turned into a dragon before their very eyes. _If I'm going to die, I'm going to_ deserve _it_ , she'd said, later. "Carver doesn't really have a choice. Come with me or stay in with Mother and Uncle Gamlen—he hasn't coin to spend anywhere else. Not much of a choice, if you ask me, Mother's being passive-aggressive again. It's marvelous to see when it's directed at someone else, did you know?"

"You're changing the subject, sister," Bethany says. "What's this about?"

Marian's teeth flash. "Caught me. There's someone asking around Lowtown about help getting a mage out of the city unseen. I thought you'd like to help."

Well, Bethany's not going to say no to _that_.

But the run through the sewers with a Qunari mage in tow is easily one of the worst of Bethany's life. Chantry Sister or not, obscene amounts of gold involved or not, there is nothing in the world that is worth the way this night is going.

"I hate you, I hate you, I hate you," she can hear Carver muttering somewhere to her left. She is viscerally reminded of the run through Darktown to the Amell Estate, nearly a month ago already. Time doesn't always feel linear in Kirkwall; it certainly doesn't feel linear now. The sewers are brown-walled and filled to the brim with people who kill for the sake of killing.

Ketojan growls, alight with unholy vengeance behind the lips sewn shut, the eyes forced closed. His magic is a wild explosive thing, cracking him open and pouring out golden-white.

It's more power than Bethany has ever seen in her whole entire life.

She shudders. _Shudders_.

"I've got you," Alistair says when no one's listening. His voice is muffled behind the helmet, but it's still a comfort. He's been so very quiet since they left Sister Petrice and Ser Varnell, and she doesn't know why.

"I know," Bethany says, but she stays close. It's safer here in his shadow, where she knows that no one will look to find a mage.

"Almost out," he tells her. "Almost done."

But they're not almost done.

They're the farthest thing from done.

Because it's only later, after they've cut their way through a couple dozen Qunari warriors, that Bethany understands. The sun's rising over the Waking Sea pink-gold, a bright blanket of colour that hurts the eyes after such a long time in the dark.

"Maker," Marian says, while Bethany tries to put her back together. Three of her knuckles are broken, and she took one of the spears to the thigh. If she were anyone else, she'd be dead. But as it stands, she just waits for the healing magic to leave a scar. Only her sister, honestly. "That could have gone better."

 _Could have gone better_ doesn't really cover it. The wounds of the battle are going to linger here for a long time: bones and horns and skulls, all left to bleach out white and shiny in the sun. Beneath the colourful flags of Qunari war banners, red and blue and yellow, they'll look like someone tried to perform a ritual that went very, very badly. There's blood everywhere, soaking into the sand. The Wounded Coast is very quiet, only the sea and the last lingering stars to make a sound.

Today, the coast's name fits better than it ever has.

Wounded is right.

Bethany glances at Alistair to make sure that he's alright—this is not the first time she's been sickly thankful for the templar armour, and it will not be the last—and then she goes to scold her twin for poking at his bruises. When she looks him over, she feels a little sick. He might as well be a pin-cushion, for all the holes in him.

Carver always the worst off, but that's not surprising at all.

The trek back to Kirkwall is quicker over land, but they're all exhausted. Between resting so that they don't all fall over to die in a ditch and trying to convince Marian that yes, they _do_ , in fact, need to eat, by the time they get back to the city, the day is done. Up beyond the Docks and past the sunken entrances to Darktown, through the thick iron gates into Lowtown. Bethany is so tired she can't see straight, but she recognizes Sister Petrice's safehouse.

There are lights flickering inside, shadows thrown long across walls hardly visible through the shutters. Someone's home.

Marian doesn't hesitate. There is violence in her fists, vengeful fury in her mouth.

Every so often, Bethany's sister does manage to have phenomenal dramatic timing.

"Darling, I'm home!" she calls, and kicks the door down with a _bang_.

"Hurry, we can't leave without—" Sister Petrice is saying, but she breaks off, freezing in place. Her hands flex. She's got the look of someone who's been caught precisely the thing they shouldn't be, and Bethany doesn't feel sorry for her at all. "Oh, Maker, serah—we didn't expect you back so early!"

"Hello Sister," Marian smiles like a knife. "Going somewhere? You seem in a rush. Worried that we'd get back before you had a chance to destroy the evidence? Tut, tut, what _would_ the Revered Mother say?"

"I—have no idea what you're talking about. We were packing up to return to the Chantry, weren't we, Ser Varnell—"

"Oh, come now, Sister Petrice, let's all be honest with one another. You didn't expect us to come back at all!"

Sister Petrice's face turns to ruddy cement.

"Unfortunately, I do have a rather spectacular habit of surviving," Marian continues. She doesn't take her eyes of the Sister. She's like a wolf, the scent of trapped prey thick in her nose. The air seems to hum with it. "And I've had a lot of practice disarming traps. Tell me, Sister, how long did it take you plan this?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Sister Petrice says, again, through grit teeth. She reaches into her robes, pulls out a pouch of coin. She roots through it for a moment, deliberate. "The Qunari is free, so. Here. For services rendered."

"Your Ketojan is _dead_ ," Marian says, sharp.

"Am I supposed to be surprised? Take it and go away."

"A sovereign," Marian stares evenly at the gold the Sister dropped into her palm. "You sent us up to die against a battalion of furious Qunari—without warning us, mind—for _one miserable sovereign_?"

"It's more than enough," Sister Petrice says, folding her arms. She juts her chin out, expression turned mean. She doesn't love a lovely face, does the Sister; she's far too pale, lips too thin, the light in her sunken grey eyes a touch too fervent. Or perhaps it's not the face at all, and more the person underneath it.

"No, it isn't," Marian says. She rolls the coin between her knuckles, metal and skin, metal and skin. A sublime flash of gold, here and then gone. "You should watch your back, Sister. The art of bribery seems to be beyond you. You never know where you'll make enemies."

The Sister smiles. It's a nasty thing. "Oh? Really, why should I? No one's going to believe a Ferelden refugee."

"Pardon?" Marian says, so pleasant.

"You know why I picked you. No name, no standing—no one would have missed you if you were dead. And now no one will believe a word you say against me," Sister Petrice says. The nasty smile turns nastier, pulls up into a real sneer. "Your death could have meant something. Only eternity is at stake, serah."

And she turns away.

The moment hangs unbroken, spoilt as curdled milk. Bethany will never be able to say who moved first, too busy thanking the Maker that Alistair is wearing a helmet and that no one's heard him speak. Ser Varnell is in the middle of drawing his sword.

The knives sprout from Sister Petrice's body like flowers out of parched land.

"I did tell her to watch her back," Marian murmurs as she bends to retrieve her daggers. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she didn't listen. What about you, templar? How much do you value your life? More or less than the dear Sister did?"

Petrice's eyes are dead blank things in their sockets. Whoever she was is gone: religious zealotry and all, dead is dead is dead. The wound on her chest bleeds sluggishly now, blood soaking into the dark fabric of her robes and staining it even darker. In the dingy Lowtown light, she could be anyone at all.

Ser Varnell's shield gleams. He doesn't say anything, just heads for the door.

"May you rot in the Void," her sister says, spits. Her eyes are like ice. It's easy to forget, so much of the time, that her sister made a promise to keep the family safe a very long time ago and hasn't stopped keeping it since. It's like this: Marian turned herself into a weapon so that her siblings wouldn't have to. "Bethy? Carver? Are you two alright?"

Bethany sends a quick prayer to the Maker. _Please forgive this violation_ , she thinks, but she's done worse things than leave bodies behind to keep the templars off her trail. Or, well, no, she hasn't, not really; Lothering was so quiet, and before that it had always been Father who'd done this dirty work.

Father and Marian, that is, and always to keep Bethany free.

"I'm fine," Bethany says, voice very small. "Should we—should we burn her?"

"No," her sister says, sudden and sharp. "No magic fire, not tonight. It'll leave a mark. And besides, this looks _much_ more incriminating. A lay Sister with a sovereign in her palm, found dead in a Lowtown hovel? Oh _my_ , the _scandal_!"

Carver pinches the bridge of his nose. "Why are you _like_ this?"

"It's a good question. Let the Chantry cover it up if they want, but I don't care," Marian says. Her gaze sweeps over Sister Petrice again, cold all the way down to her soul, and then she pivots on a heel, looks straight at Alistair. "Objections?"

"She tried to kill us first," he says evenly, staring unseeingly at the body. Bethany thinks she can see the Saarebas' broken horns reflected in his gaze. It's been a very bad night. "So no, none off the top of my head."

"Excellent," Marian says, grinning as she claps her hands. "Now, let's go get drunk!"

Really, Bethany shouldn't be so surprised.

(No one should be surprised that Marian Hawke's casual response to murder is alcohol. Marian Hawke's casual response to _everything_ is alcohol.)

The Hanged Man is always an explosion of life and noise. Even this late at night, bedraggled and bloodied, a merry cheer goes up when her sister drags them all through the doors. "HAWKE!" echoes the room.

Marian takes a bow, twist of spine, bend of bone.

Sometimes, you just want to go somewhere everyone knows your name.

"Well, that was terrible," she announces to the room at large. There's a drying streak of blood across her nose. Why is there always a drying streak of blood across her nose? "Corff, get me a pint. I should have been drunk yesterday."

"You _were_ drunk yesterday, sweetness," a low, smoky voice drifts over the crowd like one more oil slick. "Have you forgotten already?"

Bethany watches all of her sister's muscles go tight as a coiled spring and then slack, shoulders dropping. A dark-skinned woman materializes, gold around in her neck, in her lower lip, winking at her ears beneath a dark sea of curls and a blue bandanna. As she saunters towards them, bottle in hand, her face curls into a smile.

"Hello, Isabela," Marian's lips quirk.

"Hawke, there's blood on your face. Did you go killing and not even bother to bring me along?" Isabela asks, leaning against the bar. Her gaze passes beyond the blood on Marian's face, over Bethany, over Alistair, and right back to where they started. "I call foul."

"Killing _is_ sort of a pastime of mine, if you hadn't noticed."

Isabela laughs. "Come on, big girl's dealing. Bring the stunned little templar. Look at him, he has no idea what's going on, it's adorable. You too, Carver, you should play, it'll be… _titillating_."

"It's always sex with her," Carver mutters, slomping off towards a table in the far back of the tavern. There's a smattering of people there, Varric and Merrill and another man in what looks like feathers that Bethany doesn't know—oh, Maker, who has her sister picked up _now_ —sitting around with scarred-up tankards of swill while Aveline cuts the deck. Everything's too loud, too close, but—

"Coming?" asks Marian, over her shoulder. She crooks an eyebrow.

(Some days, it feels like that's all her sister ever does: glances back from somewhere far away, there but not. Some days, it feels like Marian's going to leave them, her and Carver and Mother and even Dog, like there's some great big destiny ahead of her that they don't have a part in. Some days, Bethany hates it and other days she's a little bit grateful. She looks at Alistair, and thinks about that closing gap.)

"What do you think?" Bethany asks him.

"I think we could all use a drink," Alistair exhales. He leans down to press his mouth to the top of her head. "Don't let them eat me. I'm too pretty to die, and _you're_ too pretty to be a widow."

She smothers a giggle. "Would I really be a widow?"

"You tell me," he says, and his mouth lifts into a grin. It's weaker than she's used to, but at least it's there. "

Bethany flushes all the way to the tips of her ears. There's nothing in the whole world that's going to keep her from blushing when he says things like that, it seems. "You already know my answer to that."

Alistair laughs, and together with tangled fingers they go to join the table.

The night blurs.

It's laughter and terrible ale that Bethany refuses to touch, Carver stumbling over his words every time Merrill turns her wide eyes on him, Isabela smirking when Aveline catches her pilfering the cards. The man with the feathers is called Anders, and though he watches Alistair like a hawk, he has kind eyes over the meagre glinting pile of coin in the center of the table.

They play all night.

Wicked Grace is a game for dishonesty. Everyone cheats, and no one apologizes.

And it's—it's _nice_.

"I can't believe we did that," Bethany murmurs, an Age and a half later. In the wee hours of the morning, nearly everyone's either passed out or long ago headed home. Her sister and Varric are talking quietly by the embers of the guttering fire. Carver's snoring on the floor. She's glad to watch them for a little while, these odds and ends of her family. It's a balm over the fear that still clings to her throat, Sister Petrice's dead eyes, the templar's dead bloodied smile. "Are you going to get in trouble?"

"For what, Varnell?" Alistair's throat _clicks_ as he swallows. He's been very quiet all evening; the Sister's Qunari trap had shaken him, and badly. While everyone else had drunk themselves into a stupor, he'd simply pulled Bethany into his lap, wrapped himself around her and held on. "No. He—isn't well-liked. The Knight-Commander might tighten patrols, but… no."

"I'm sorry," she whispers.

"Don't be," Alistair says. "Your sister was right."

And, well, it's not like Marian left anyone enough alive to have the gumption to go off and tell the Knight-Commander. For now, they're safe. Bethany leans against Alistair, the circle of his arms safe and dearly familiar, and she closes her eyes. "Tired," she murmurs.

Not as tired as she could be, but still. Tired.

"Me, too," Alistair says. He drops his chin to rest against the top of her head. "Do you want to go home?"

"Yes, please," she hums her agreement, almost all the way asleep.

"You're going to have to get off, Beth," Alistair says, a thread of amusement in his voice. She cracks her eyes open to look up at him; in the glowing red light of the embers, he's all shadow and gold, and she hardly recognizes him. He's lovely. She likes him _so much_. Too much, probably. There's a speckle of dried blood just below his ear.

"Mmkay," she says, but doesn't move at all.

Alistair laughs, low and soft. It's a nighttime laugh, too intimate for daytime, too close. Bethany curls into it, buries her face into his shoulder and just listens to him breathe. It's a nice sound, breathing. Steadying. Reassuring.

"Am I to carry you home?" he asks from somewhere very far away.

"Better you than me," she says, which makes absolutely no sense at all.

"C'mon, Beth, up you get," he says. She goes easy, lets him move her up and off into standing. She's tired enough to sway a little back and forth, and for some reason she thinks of Lothering's Chantry, and Mother Nita, and all the Sisters there. It had been such a quiet, dusty place. But it had always been full of near as much love and compassion as dust, and Kirkwall's Chantry is nothing like it.

Bethany wonders, dreamily, what they're all doing now.

Over the low rumble of the Hanged Man's last patrons, she can hear Alistair muttering something to her sister, _tired_ and _home_ and _she needs to rest_ all jumbled up and not making sense. Carver snores loudly. Bethany loves them so much she thinks she might die of it.

"Home?" Alistair asks when he gets back a moment later, very quietly. He slips an arm around her waist, solid and warm. She likes him best like this, without the templar armour and the responsibilities and the fear of everything that seems to cling to him when he's had a bad day. It's nice.

"Home," she says, sagging a little because she knows that he isn't going to let her fall.

The walk home from the Hanged Man isn't a long one, but it's long enough that Bethany tucks herself beneath Alistair's arm just in case. The air is cold and wet enough to shake her back to wakefulness and she straightens, a little, salt and rust on her tongue. The stars are out, pin-prick diamonds unfurling across the velvet blanket of the night sky. It would be nice if things could stay like this, always, just the two of them on the way to somewhere called home. Alistair's hands are callused and warm around hers.

"Your sister's friends are mad," he says, eventually.

"Marian likes to adopt strays, what can I say," Bethany says. That's putting it lightly; her sister likes to adopt _murderers_ , truly, and then she goes and sets them free on the city entire because she has absolutely no shame and probably enjoys the chaos near as much as she enjoys terrible ale. "She's like a cat, I swear."

"Well, that's concerning," says Alistair.

Bethany bursts into laughter that echoes all through the streets, bouncing. It's a little too high, kind of hysteric, but it bleeds out the last lingering panic in her stomach. "Concerning, Alistair? Really? _Concerning_?"

"What _else_ am I supposed to call it?"

"You do have a gift for understatement," she dimples at him, all that laughter turning sweet as summertime peaches and hidden in the corners of her mouth.

For the first time all night, Bethany doesn't feel like crying.

He sucks in a sharp breath. Without preamble, he catches her up and pulls her close, the blunt pommel of his sword digging into her hip. In the shadow of a pillar, tucked out of sight of the world, it's very easy to cling to one another and think of absolutely nothing else. Such a bright clean burn; Sister Petrice and Ser Varnell fade as though they had never been.

She finds herself with her back against stone, smiling helplessly.

(Bethany has no idea how she always seems to end up in these situations. It is unequivocally Alistair's fault, and she doesn't mind in the least.)

"Hi," Beth whispers. The world spins lazily, stars streaked out against the sky above the reflection of the moon off the sea. The only solid thing is Alistair and she giggles into his shoulder until she gets her footing back. It takes a little longer than she'd like, but at least she's not tired anymore. Her blood seems to _hum_ in her veins, or maybe that's her magic, or maybe it's something else completely.

Whichever way: she wants him whole, entire, always.

"Hi, yourself. Maker's breath, Beth," Alistair says, running his thumb along the curve of her cheek. The whole world's gone a-hush, only the sound of the sea and their breath mingling in the air. "I love it when you smile."

"I love _you_ ," Bethany says, because it's a truth long overdue. She loves him, she loves him, she loves him. And it's not—love isn't something she has any real experience with. The only kind of love she knows is the kind that's too much, too big, too protective—it's Marian's love, her family's love, and it's not always an easy thing. This soft pale warmth that expands in her chest like a living thing is something different entirely.

 _I love you_ , because there's no other way to put it.

"You know, here I was, planning all sorts of big gestures and you just go and—" he breaks off to wave at her, eyes crinkling with something a little more intimate than mirth, "— _say_ it."

"Was I not supposed to?" Bethany asks, tilting her head just a little in question.

"Not if you don't mean it," he says. Alistair catches a fistful of her curls to draw her close, so careful with the dark mass of it, soft as silk, precious as gold. He does it a lot, sometimes like he can't help himself, sometimes not. Bethany thinks it helps him keep himself on the ground when nothing else does, and she can't deny that it feels good. Feels _right_. It's belonging is what it is, and in the most secret parts of her, Beth likes that she belongs to him.

She likes that they belong to each other.

"I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it," she murmurs. Her fingers sparkle, tingling with the first glimmers of lightning, frost, healing. She can never decide what part of her magic is the most dangerous.

Alistair chuckles into her hair. "I thought we were going home."

"Halfway there," she smiles into his chest.

They walk the rest of the way home like that, just like that, wrapped and woven and twined together so close that the night doesn't seem so dark. No one looking out their windows would think it was anything but what it is—no demons, no blood mages, no religious zealots inciting rebellion and hate between peoples. Tonight, Alistair and Bethany are themselves and no one else.

Just a young couple after a very long day, on their way home.

—

"This is a terrible idea," Bethany says, looking between her siblings. Mother's already made her plea, and it fell on deaf ears. Leandra Hawke lost her husband to the taint, and she can't stand the thought of losing another person she cares about to that deep dark place. But both Marian and Carver's minds are made up: they're going on this stupid expedition even if it kills them both. And there's no one else to make the argument that it's a bad plan, because Alistair's on patrol at the Gallows, and Uncle Gamlen doesn't care either way.

"I'm not leaving Mother in that house for one minute more," Marian says. "And Carver wants to come. I'll not deny him that. Maker knows, maybe he'll stop being such a tit."

" _Anything_ to be out of Mar's shadow," Carver says, and means it.

Fifty sovereigns is a lot of money, and it disappears into Bartrand's hands so easily.

"Please don't die," Bethany tells Carver's collarbone, hugging him as tight as she can. He's her twin, and the thought of losing him makes all of her guts freeze. They don't—they don't see each other nearly as much as they should, anymore, but…

Well, there's not really a word for what it means to grow up.

"I'm not going to," Carver says. It's quiet, not grouchy or skulking or any of the other things that Carver usually is. Just quiet. "Be good, okay? And beat Alistair with a stick for me when he gets annoying."

Beth hits him, and laughs so that she doesn't cry.

And she watches them leave, waving over the rise until she can't see them anymore, and then she helps Mother home. There's a part of Bethany that is painfully glad that she didn't accompany them all the way to the Deep Roads entrance. She doesn't know how she'd survive that, watching half of her family slip beneath the earth, maybe to never return. At the very least they've brought Anders with them—whatever else he may be, he is a Grey Warden _and_ a healer, and together there's not much that combination can't fix.

Regardless, after she gets Mother back to Uncle Gamlen's, Bethany goes home and empties the contents of her stomach until all that's left inside of her is bile.

It's the fourth time this week.

Something about the thought crystallizes. Four times? Has it really been so many? She's been queasy for days, but…

Oh, Maker's breath, she really, really hopes not.

There's a herbalist just down the street. She's an older woman of Rivaini heritage with a lined face and a very no-nonsense manner, hair often tied back in bristly grey horsetail. Bethany only met her because once upon a time, Isabela came swinging through the door to take her hat shopping, and had stopped to buy a poultice for nearly the exact opposite reason that Bethany is going to be going now.

Because even though Lady Elegant would do just as well, Bethany thinks she could use a little bit of no-nonsense, right now. She can't go to Mother—Maker knows that dropping _that_ on her might just cause her to implode—but Beth needs… something. Someone older, who isn't entirely caught up in all of her family drama. Someone unbiased, and Lady Elegant won't be able to be unbiased.

And so Bethany gathers herself up and washes her mouth out, chews a piece of fresh elfroot leaf to calm her stomach. There's a fresh shift in the linen closet. Clean clothing helps.

 _You can't be sure_ , she reminds herself. _No one can be sure_.

But sure or not, Bethany still has to go, because she _does_ need to be sure. They're running out of bread, anyway. Maybe she'll stop in at the Hanged Man, Isabela is probably there drinking and scamming half the tavern out of their coin, and she'd be willing to—

Bethany shakes her head. No, that won't do.

Whatever this is, Alistair should know before anyone else. He deserves that much.

It's a ten-minute walk to the herbalist's. The old woman lives behind a door made of ancient silver wood, and when Bethany slips inside, it's like walking into a young forest. There are plants everywhere, dried herbs sold by the bundle, the deeply calming smell of growing things. Odd little bottles line the walls, poultices stored and labeled for sale, and books, books upon books upon books. There's no one else about.

"Um," Bethany says into the stillness, "Messere Taena? Are you there?"

"That's _Missus_ Taena! Spirits, you Marchers have no manners," comes the grumpy reply. Missus Taena emerges from the door to the back room, wiping wiry gnarled hands on her apron. She's much as Bethany remembers, still fierce as raw lyrium and just about as alive. "Oh, not Marcher, that's a new one. Ferelden?"

Bethany nods. "I'm good for the coin, I've—I know Isabela? She brought me here once, and I thought…"

"I wasn't going to ask," Missus Taena says, dry. "Any friend of that pirate's is welcome, but tell her not to come back when y'see her, she's been off her tea too long and if she gets sick, I don't want to deal with it. What d'ye need, love?"

"I—I'm not sure. I think I'm sick? I've been… throwing up, and I'm not sure why."

"Up on the table, then, let me have a look," Missus Taena says. Bethany does as she's bid, and the herbalist peers at her, tilts her chin up to look her in the eye. It's an all-over dressing down, efficient but careful.

"Well," she says, at last, after poking and prodding at Bethany for almost a full ten minutes in silence. "You're not ill, girl."

"Then why am I…?"

Missus Taena snorts, sorting through a drawer full of string and shiny bits of rock. "You know why. You forgot to take your tea, no? Happens to the best of us. What do you want to do about it?"

"I don't know," Bethany says, looking at her hands.

"Best think on it," Missus Taena says, not unkindly. She presses something into Bethany's palms: a clear phial, filled with something very sickly and dark that could be tar. "But here, for the trouble. It'll be three bits, there's a girl. Once you've made your decision, come back, and bring that with you. If you decide you don't need it—well, we'll see, won't we."

"Only three?" Bethany asks. She's got _silver_ in her pockets, real silver. She'd thought it would be much more expensive than three bits—three bits is an ale! Three bits is nothing!

"Only three," she says. Her eyes are the darkest nut brown, and they glint out of the folds of her face, though with what, Beth isn't sure. It might be sadness. It might also not be sadness. But it's bright and it's soft and most of all it's kind. That's what matters. "Most girls who come to me can't afford more than that."

"So… I'm really not ill?" Bethany asks, hesitant. Her hands close around the phial like a lifeline.

"For true," Missus Taena says. She gives Bethany a moment to adjust to this radical new information. "Now off with you, unless there's something else?"

There isn't anything else.

Bethany murmurs her thanks, and slips back outside. Kirkwall's sunshine is very bright, and today it's very warm. Heat hazes up off the stone in waves, and it's barely noon.

She has a long day of waiting ahead of her.

Maker's breath, she wishes the walk home was a little bit longer.

But it's not, and when she slips inside and locks the door behind her, a great heavy sigh escapes her. There's nothing to do now but wait, wait and think, wait and think and wait some more. There's nothing even to do, because she cleaned the last of the dishes this morning before Marian and Carver left, and now—

Now, there's nothing. Alistair won't be home for hours, yet.

Bethany sits very still for a very long time with her arms wrapped around her stomach, staring out the window. The Waking Sea glitters, a dragon's treasure hoard roiling on the waves—Maker, that sounds like something Isabela would say—and the breeze sweeps in sky blue to pickle everything in brine, salt and rust. The vial Missus Taena gave her is clenched so tight in her fist, but she doesn't move even when the sun starts to go down.

"Have you ever thought about—having children?" she asks aloud as the door opens and the shuffle of feet sounds behind her. "Hello, by the way."

"Not really," Alistair says absently. The door closes. "Why?"

"I'm just wondering, I guess," Bethany says. She listens to the familiar cadence of deconstruction: metal against metal, metal against wood, metal against skin. Swallows hard, and searches for a calm that isn't there. Her stomach churns right along with her magic, and she has to go back to concentrating on the Waking Sea's endlessness to keep from bursting into nonsensical tears. Maker, is it going to be like this forever?

"Not usually something you just _wonder_ about, Beth," he says, but it sounds like he's smiling. Alistair loops himself around her, drops his chin to her shoulder and bends just enough to kiss her cheek. "Hello to you, too. Feeling better?"

"I went to the herbalist this morning after—after everyone left," she says, and turns in his arms so that she can look up at him. Bethany has to fight not to wring her hands, and there's anxiety in her throat, clenching around her vocal cords. And she can't really—can't really think, because Alistair's just looking at her, warm brown eyes level. "Because I realized… stomach illness doesn't usually last this long, Alistair. It's been a week! And I—"

"Beth," Alistair says, so quietly. "What's happened? Are you alright?"

Bethany draws in a very deep lungful of air, exhales it heavily, slowly. "I'm—I think I'm pregnant."

"Oh," he says. It's such a little thing.

Alistair folds around her like a house of cards blown away on the wind. It's a collapse, an absolute taking apart, as though someone's taken a knife and carved his insides out. Bethany can't support his whole weight, and they sink to the ground.

"Are you sure?" he asks, hoarse.

"No," Bethany says. "But the herbalist thought so, anyway. There's nothing else wrong with me. I'm not ill, except for…"

They both think of the last few mornings, Bethany shoving out of bed before the sun rose with her stomach in her throat and hardly able to keep anything down. The nausea sometimes extends into the afternoon, and right now she mostly just feels hollow. Not a bad kind of hollow, either, not abomination-hollow or sickness-hollow, just… _hollow_. There's not really another way to explain it.

"Except for when you are," Alistair says, a little wry. He reaches up to run his hands through her curls. "What do you want to do?"

"I don't know," she says. "What about you?"

"Do I really get a say?" he asks, raises an eyebrow at her.

"You know that you do," she says. He's always been good about that, always been very content to let her do precisely what she wants whenever she wants. It's not a freedom Bethany is quite used to: she's spent her whole life taking her siblings and her mother into account about every single decision she's ever made.

(With the notable exception of everything that led them here, of course. Everything to do with Alistair in general, really; Bethany knows that Carver would have been so much happier had she not ever—well. Not ever _anything_ , with Alistair. The whole falling in love business. Maybe that she hadn't stood down about it says more than she thinks it does.)

"Up to you," Alistair says, so careful. "It's your body, not mine."

Insecurity is pale green. Bethany hunches in on herself so that she doesn't have to look him in the eye. "You're allowed to have an opinion, you know. If—we both did this. It was a joint effort, Alistair, it sort of has to be."

He chuckles. It's not a very cheerful sound. "I'm not very good at families, Beth."

"I know," she murmurs. They're nose to nose, barely a hairsbreadth apart; this close, she could count his eyelashes if she wanted to, and she has and she does. But Bethany _does_ know what he means. It's been a year. There's almost nothing they haven't wrenched out and shone beneath the light of their combined scrutiny. They've taken themselves apart, but putting yourself back together is _hard_.

It's her magic. It's his parents.

Her fears. His, too.

(Fears are one that used to come up a lot, though not so much anymore. The Chantry, the Circle, Ferelden's throne. It all comes down to the same thing: being trapped into something you didn't choose with no way out. Alistair and Bethany would understand each other just for that, even if they weren't what they are.)

It's an unmaking, and not a happy one, at that.

"You've been doing alright so far, you know," she says, slowly. The words feel like marbles in her mouth and she chews on them, trying to find the right way to phrase it. There might not _be_ a right way to phrase it; this might be something they struggle with. But it won't shatter them. They're stronger than that. "I don't think family is ever really easy."

Alistair looks at her. "What if I mess it up?"

 _Oh_ , she thinks. It clicks, a little bit, that this is something she probably should have seen coming. _Oh_.

"Is that it? You're scared?" Bethany whispers. Her hair curls around her face, around his face, whorls of colourless ink in the gloom.

"Terrified," Alistair whispers back. It's not a lie; she can see the truth of it in his gaze. He is _terrified_. Bethany doesn't think he's ever been so terrified of anything in his entire life. Family is so hard, even now. Especially now, and especially for him, because Alistair has a complicated relationship with family, and having one, and being left behind on purpose. When she traces her finger along the curve of his cheekbone, he closes his eyes.

"No one else knows," she says as she traces his cheek a second time. "I wanted to tell you first."

Alistair nods into her hand, eyes still closed. The floor isn't very comfortable, but probably neither of them should be standing right now. For a long time, they just stay like that. Woven this close, it's hard to tell where Bethany ends and Alistair begins, all hands and arms and bodies, and together they try to figure out how to breathe.

A shuddering eternity later, he says, "Maybe we should leave."

"Leave? Leave Kirkwall, you mean? Why?"

"Little mages do not a safe home make. Templars, remember?" Alistair drums his fingers against her abdomen, _tap-tap-tap-tap_ , and moves just enough to pillow his other arm beneath his head. Bethany finds herself being pulled half atop him, all her muscles going loose with the familiarity of the gesture. She tucks her face into his chest, nose against his collarbone, and all she can smell is soap, metal, skin. It's funny, how much that makes her think: _home_.

"We can't go back to Ferelden," she says, shaking her head just enough for it to count. "The Blight's barely ended, Hero of Ferelden or not. And—"

"And I have no desire to be king of anything," Alistair says drily.

"And that," Bethany manages a small smile, just the corners of her lips pulling up. "We can wait awhile before telling anyone, if you'd like," she hesitates, shifts a little as she tries not to ruin things by saying something awful, "if it'll help."

He tugs her a closer until they're pressed as close as they possibly can be, no space between them for the nightmares to slip in and settle down to rest. Bethany cards her fingers through his hair, something soft and slow as she begins to tuck in all his ragged edges, smooth them over with safety and warmth.

"It'll help," he says, so quietly into her throat. There's something shaking to him all over. "Maker's breath, Beth, please don't die."

"I'm not going anywhere," she says, remembers that his mother died giving birth. And maybe that's where the kindness came from, the part of him that's lost so much that it can't do anything else but do what it can to stop everyone else from losing things, too. Maybe it's a defense or a stubborn cling to the gentle soft parts of him that haven't cracked and fallen away into nothing. The Chantry took a lot of him and broke it, but it couldn't break this. It's the deepest, most intrinsic part of him: _be kind_. Always be kind, even when the world isn't kind back. Always be kind, even when the world wasn't kind in the first place.

Andraste's blood, she loves him so _much_.

"Promise?" Alistair croaks.

"Promise," Bethany says. She burrows into him, wants to wipe away all the ash that darkens his soul. He's so good, and he can't believe he's worth anything at all. "I promise; I'm never going anywhere. Promise, promise, promise."

The sun goes down.

No one leaves.

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.


	4. holding onto the pieces of your heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HONEY IM HOME

—

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.

.

.

.

Losing Carver is like a phantom limb.

There aren't—she doesn't really know what else to call it, those first delirious days after her sister breaches the surface of the world but doesn't bring their brother back with her. It's an itch that Bethany can't scratch, a source of unending ire, a tinny hollow _ping_ in the center of her chest that might be a breaking heart.

A phantom limb. Pain without source. Pain without _end_.

For weeks after the fact, Bethany wanders Kirkwall's streets with empty eyes and her arms wrapped around herself, hunting for something that she can't quite name. It's not even that she thinks about it, but she can't _help_ it—her whole life, her twin was her lodestone, her compass, her sulky north star, and the lack of him now aches all the way through her.

It's like this: Marian comes back with a dragon's hoard of treasure, but there's nothing in her face except the death of everything that Bethany has ever loved.

Well, the death of everything she's ever loved, barring Alistair.

"I'm sorry," he says, the days when she feels like she might shatter. He touches her like she won't break, those days, firm against the pale bend of her wrists for all the soft timber of his voice. "Maker, Bethany, I'm so sorry."

"What am I supposed to do without him?" Beth asks blankly, often at first but less so as the days go by. It's her mother's eyes, maybe, but the words stick in her throat until she doesn't have a choice but to voice them. "What am I supposed to—I don't understand, Alistair. What am I supposed to _do_?"

Because here's what they don't tell you about grief: it never goes away.

It never stops hurting. It never stops seeming senseless. It never _stops_ ; you learn to live around it, this new hole inside, but it doesn't go away. It doesn't just disappear. Maybe the edges smooth over, scab up and stop being such a jagged-sharp gaping _wound_ , but it's—it's like scar tissue. Never all the way perfect.

And that's okay, Bethany discovers, because life goes on.

The Amell estate is a tall, spindly building with high vaulted ceilings and polished dark wood floors, clothed in velvet purple-red that makes Bethany think of old blood. It doesn't give her shivers, precisely, nothing so ominous as that, but there is… there is _something_. Whatever it is, it sets her ill at ease, stills her deep inside, makes her want to hide and take cover. It makes her think of the Gallows, fear an acrid burn in the back of her throat.

In another life, this might have been her home.

But in this life, it mostly feels like a cage.

And so while Mother flits about with shining eyes and wary cheer on her lips, while Marian follows behind trying to rein her in, Bethany draws into the concave hollow of Alistair's body with her arms wrapped around her stomach. The babe will be here any day now, tiny fingers and tiny toes, all so fragile.

"Are you alright?" Alistair asks, softly enough that neither Mother nor Marian will hear. His arm comes up to curl around her, tug her a little bit closer. Beth goes easy. Sometimes it feels like that's all they're ever doing, getting so close that nothing could ever separate them.

"I miss home," Bethany says, just as soft, and if it feels like a confession that's because it is. "I'm not—I don't know. I want to go _home_."

"I know," Alistair says, and Bethany knows that he _does_ know. Because it's like this: Alistair never really had a home, and then they built one together, and now they're both set adrift. Home, with its little slats for windows and its silvery old door. Home, its solid walls, its brass knobs. Home, the kitchen table's awful wobble, the sleepy warm way the sun would slip in through the shutters in the morning.

She thinks that they both want it back so much because it was _theirs_. She thinks that they both want it back so much that it aches.

But Marian lost Carver to the Deep Roads, and it's been made very clear to both Bethany and Alistair that she won't lose her remaining sibling to anything, no matter that anything is. Templar husband or not, the Gallows are too much a threat for Marian's comfort. She keeps a close eye on the mages she cares about, Bethany closest of all.

Besides.

It makes Mother happy.

(Maker, family is such a hard thing. Bethany swallows around a lump in her throat and very carefully does not think about the dark bruises beneath Anders' eyes or the tremble to Merrill's smile. Marian can only keep the templars so far away; neither Darktown nor the alienage are free of their influence. Staying close to her sister's blinding light is better, because it means that everyone is too dazzled to focus on the people who trail in her shadow.)

So it's a foregone thing. Bethany and Alistair pick up the threads of their lives, the dishes and the pots and pans, staves, swords, sticks, stones, and begin the long process of hauling it all up to Hightown. It's more conspicuous, to be sure, but having Marian Hawke's sharp-edged smile to hide behind is exactly what they both need.

And the Amell gold isn't nothing to sneeze at, either.

"I should quit," Alistair grumbles, three days after they've finally settled in. Bethany is curled up in bed, watching quietly as he tugs his gauntlets on. There are five full philters of lyirum sitting on the windowsill, shining blue as the midday sky in the sunlight. He brings them home when he can; lyrium is so notoriously difficult to get one's hands on, and for a mage the extra power never goes amiss. Addictive, as well, but that's another story. It should make him sick, skipping the draughts the way he does, but it never seems to. Bethany doesn't ask. Some things are still delicate.

"And leave poor Ser Cullen to deal with the Knight-Commander all on his own? He'd never forgive you," she says, shifts a little. Walking is difficult, but what _isn't_ difficult, these days. She kicks the covers off.

" _I'm_ never going to forgive me if I miss—" and here, he pauses to give her a very significant look. His eyebrows do that ridiculous squiggly thing they do when he's trying very badly to get something across, "—anything. Cullen can get stuffed, you're prettier than he is."

Bethany makes a noise that's not quite a giggle and not quite a snort, muffled mirth into her fist. It's better than the other option. Maker knows she's cried enough about things that don't make sense; crying about the fact that no one ever really leaves the Order might break something inside of her that can't be fixed.

She stands a little unsteadily, unbalanced, still unused to the way her body adjusts for weight of her swollen abdomen. She finds her center, crosses the room. The carpet is soft beneath her bare feet.

"Well," Bethany says, a little smile twitching at her mouth, " _that's_ not very nice, is it."

"True, though," Alistair grins the words. "You _are_ prettier than he is."

Bethany bites down on her lip to keep the bubble of laughter from escaping the cavern of her chest. When he touches her cheek, cold metal against her skin, she leans into it. Eyes closed, tilt of jaw. The sun in through the window bleeds through her eyelids gold-red, warmly comforting.

Andraste, it's so easy.

"I love you," Bethany says, and means it.

For a long time, they stand there together. Long after when they both should have been up and ready for the day, long after he should have been headed for the Gallows, and she should have been downstairs helping Sandal with breakfast or keeping Mother from picking at Marian or stopping Dog from getting into the larder, they stand there just close enough to relearn how to breathe. They both have responsibilities, is the thing. They're both adults. Hightown is solid white stone, clean and bright, but even that veneer can't hide the disease that digs its sick claws into Kirkwall.

Sometimes, Bethany closes her eyes and remembers Lothering. She remembers those sun-baked days, the pegs in the door where her father used to hang his cloak, the bright-painted shutters over the little flower boxes in the windows, trying to sit up in bed only to yank herself into bright sharp pain where Carver had nailed her braid to the bed. She remembers Alistair stumbling over his words, the way the colour had drained out of his face the first time he'd seen her bent over a small unmoving body with sparkling hands, the stink of fear in her nostrils layered over elfroot and oil.

"Anyone home in there?" Alistair chuckles, his gauntleted hand still against her cheek. "Maker's breath, Beth, where did you go?"

"Lothering," she says without opening her eyes to look at him, because she doesn't want to lie but she doesn't want to see him flinch, either.

"Ah," he says. She waits for his hand to drop away; Lothering will never be anything but an open wound, a gaping maw of things lost to the fire. It's not a good place to go back to, not here, not now. Not when they're both finally starting to move on.

(Though moving on is subjective. Kirkwall is deeper and darker and more dangerous than Lothering ever was. Bethany doesn't know all the templars in Kirkwall, but she knows Alistair, and that's good enough.)

"Do you ever miss it?" Alistair asks.

"I miss what it could have been," Bethany says. And she does. She misses what it could have been—she misses the gold-green fields and she misses the echo of the Chant in Sister Leliana's voice and she misses the fond way the villagers used to look at her and Alistair, all so well-pleased. She misses that it could have been a quiet little life, simple and good and far away from the politicking of Thedas because whatever else Ferelden is, it's _isolated_. She misses it like she misses Marian's knives between her ribs, like she misses sunshine, like she misses Carver.

Alistair gathers her up, pulls her close. His arms are solid, and Bethany is unspeakably grateful. "So do I."

She finds herself in the crooks of his body with her cheek to his chestplate. Magic had always been the thin line between magnificence and the death of hope; she'd always thought that it tainted everything it touched, but Alistair is still himself, and the lives growing beneath her sternum don't seem much worse for it, either. Bethany sighs out mist, frost, ice, colouring the air around them a blue so pale that it's almost white.

"You should go," she says, at last. The sun slats in through the window pale watery gold, lighting him from the inside.

"Will you be alright if I do?" Alistair asks, a little wry. His mouth tips upwards, threatening a crooked grin.

"I'm always alright," Bethany smiles.

"You're a terrible liar, love," he tells her fondly, shaking his head.

She's not going to deny that. Bethany looks up at him for a long moment, trying to memorize the way the morning light soaks into his skin. She likes him like this, likes _them_ like this, when they share space and air and a bed. "You really should go."

"I really should," he agrees, and proceeds to make not a single move towards going anywhere.

"I mean it, you can't be late again. Just… be careful," Bethany says, so softly.

Alistair chuckles low, more wind than sound. Wounded. Maker, but does she know what that feels like. Careful or not, the Gallows scoop him out until he's hollow all the way through and there's nothing left. He kisses her knuckles, every one, mouth easing gentle over the creasing in her skin. He's always so mindful of the difference between armour and flesh, always so aware that she's more breakable than he is, like this. Bethany can only hope he's half so vigilant about himself; she doesn't know how to live without him anymore. "I always am."

"If anything happens, I—that place is—" Beth inhales sharply, suddenly aware of the pulse in his throat. She's not the only one with a heart in the room. "You never really come back alright."

Alistair closes his eyes, hands still wrapped around hers.

This is, unfortunately, true.

—

The twins are born small and squalling on a Maker's Rest in August.

Two tiny, perfectly identical pairs of eyes stare up at Bethany and Alistair, solemn blue gazes in solemn pink faces. Girls, the both of them, and maybe Bethany shouldn't be so surprised that she ended up with twins; she _is_ a twin, though right now hers is somewhere deep in the earth fighting darkspawn.

Once upon a time, Bethany thought that she would never be able to love someone as much as she loved Carver. And then Alistair happened—and that is always how she'll think about it, Alistair _happened_ , he wasn't and then he suddenly was—and she thought the same thing, then. It's a different kind of love, but the sentiment is the same. As far as she could tell, there would never be anyone else. Between her sister and her twin and Alistair, who else could she ever need?

She had a full heart, with no room left for more.

Looking down at the two little lives in her arms, something goes very tight in Bethany's chest. They're so very small, and only barely begun their lives, and they are _hers_.

"Alistair," she says, soft and stricken, tilting her head up to stare at him, "what if they have magic?"

"That's nothing new," he says. It's—there's no real word for the way his voice sounds. The closest Bethany one can think of is _awe_. He shifts a little closer, knee pressing into the side of her thigh, a curl of warmth and safety. "Maker's breath, Beth, _look_ at them. They're already magic."

That's a terrifying prospect, coming from a templar.

But this is Alistair. Alistair, with his uneven, goofy smile. Alistair, who always turns his helmet away. Alistair, who doesn't know how to be cruel, who feeds Dog scraps from the table even when Marian yells at him for it, who brings her mother flowers and befriends lonely templars and even lonelier mage girls. Alistair, who is kind all the way down to his bones.

Alistair, who loves her.

Maker, but does he love her.

Because whatever else they are, they've become a family. Not in the traditional sense, maybe, but it's something precious; Alistair is as much a part of it as Bethany herself is. It's rough around the jagged edges where Mother and Marian clash, oddly bulbous where Bodahn runs after Sandal when the boy causes trouble, gouged out where Carver should be. It's a little broken, a little worn, but still good.

(She tries not to think about Carver. It hurts too much.)

"You're probably right," Bethany murmurs, more to herself than to him. One of the twins makes a little burble of a noise, not quite a yawn, not quite a cry. The other twin stares solemnly up at Bethany, ink-drop stare in a teardrop face. They're so small. They're so _perfect_.

"You know I am," Alistair grins crookedly. His eyes crinkle up as he watches them, reaches out to tuck a sweat-soaked curl behind her ear. Bethany catches sight of the crescent nail-marks in his palms, aching inside. Oh, Alistair. "I'm glad _you're_ alright."

Her throat is still sore from the screaming. Already she can feel her magic fizzing beneath her skin as it mends the damage, and Bethany leans into his side just a little. She understands. "What are we going to call them?"

"Call them?" Alistair blinks down at her. "Didn't your mother already have something picked out?"

"My mother isn't here, is she," Bethany smiles out of the corner of her mouth. Dawn light pours in through the window golden-pale, and she pulls in a fortifying breath. "We're their—their parents. I think we deserve to have a say."

For a moment, Alistair just keeps looking at her, strange and serious. Hesitantly, he puts a hand against one of the twins' heads. Downy dark hair vanishes beneath skin, and Maker, they're so, so, so _small_. Bethany watches as he swallows, the line of his jaw, the bump in his throat. It's hard for him. She knows that. It's hard for them both.

Very quietly Alistair says, "I like the name Liana. I always have."

"She looks like a Liana," Bethany murmurs her agreement. It suits the baby, somehow, suits her little face and her clear, open eyes. Her twin has fallen back asleep, but Bethany has had a lot of hours to think about this, about names, about family. "What do you think of Carina?"

"I like Carina, too," he says. His arm comes up to curl around her to keep her tucked in close to his side. A family, warm and safe.

"Is that it, then?" Bethany tilts her face up to blink at him. The sun's risen enough now that the room's turned pink-gold, and they're all alight with it, burned away into holy bright white. "Liana and Carina?"

"Liana and Carina," Alistair bends to press his mouth to the top of her head. He holds them like something precious. Andraste, she loves him. "That's it, then."

—

Unfortunately, that's _not_ it, then.

Because the world outside of their bedroom hasn't stopped moving. The twins sleep through it, but there's a small explosion of cheer in the estate when Bethany and Alistair finally emerge from the bedroom. Mother claps her hands with tears in her eyes, kisses them both before she leaves to compose herself. Isabela winks, Merrill hugs everyone, Varric tells extravagant lies over Aveline's warm smile, over Fenris' quiet congratulations, over Anders pressing healing balm into Bethany's hands like hope.

Marian slings an arm around Alistair's neck and doesn't even pretend to try to kill him.

That's what Bethany will remember, later, that first gathering. The people she loves the most, with a salt breeze in through the window, laughing in the sunlight. Carver's absence is a slowly-closing wound, and it only hurts a little bit anymore.

If only it stayed like that.

But it doesn't. It goes on and on and on.

For the next few months, the Amell Estate becomes something of a waystation, an endless revolving carousel of people coming and going as steady as the tide. It's all friends and well-wishers, Marian's various contacts, even some of Mother's old acquaintances who've come out of the woodwork the way old acquaintances do when there's money or influence involved. They bring flowers until the whole manor stinks of them, dark wooden floors dusted all over with pollen and petals. When Bethany and the twins start sneezing, Marian cheerfully drags Alistair outside and forces him to help her burn the lot. It's the first few days of Bloomingtide, the air only starting to smell of wet leaves. The flowers crinkle and wilt beneath the flames, send _snap-crackle-pop!_ sparks up into perfectly endless blue.

"There, that ought to do it," Marian dusts her hands off, smug satisfaction radiating from her shoulders. The smouldering remains of the flowers give rise to a column of perfumed black smoke, a greasy mark against the sky that Alistair still follows home from the Gallows three weeks later.

"I—guess I shouldn't have brought flowers," Ser Cullen says, halting around an armful of yellow-centered daisies.

It's washing day, white sheets strung out on a line. If Ser Cullen's here, then Alistair's home. Bethany hardly registers anything else. The twins are down for a nap, and Alistair's home. Alistair's home. Alistair's _home_.

(It's hard when he's away. Bethany's not afraid to admit that she needs him.)

"No, you absolutely shouldn't have, we're burning those, give them here—!" Marian grins like a shark with all her teeth, a smear of ash on her cheek. Bethany's half up already to go over there to tell her older sister off, but Mother gets there first.

"Marian, darling, there's no need to be cruel," Leandra Hawke says crisply, and takes the flowers to go over them with a critical eye. "Lovely, we'll keep these in the kitchen. Bethany, be a dear and show him, will you? I need to have a word with your sister."

That's a dismissal if Bethany's ever heard one. She takes the flowers from her mother, the white petals soft beneath her fingers, the cheerful yellow faces turned up towards the sun. When she slips out into the hall, Ser Cullen follows her without a word.

(He's predictable like that.)

"You have to stop letting her do that to you, you walk right into it," Bethany tells him, after a long moment. It's very quiet.

Ser Cullen turns a dull shade of red, ducks his head, mumbling something unintelligible about _probably deserved it_ under his breath. His crush on her older sister would be funny if it weren't so sad. The grind of plates of metal against one another is loud in both their ears as they make their way to the kitchen, going slow. Bethany doesn't flinch away anymore, but it's still a study in self-control; Ser Cullen was Alistair's friend only but two years later, he's almost her friend, too. But still—

Still.

It's not an irrational fear, after all.

And the two little bodies sleeping upstairs are innocent to it. They're too young for magic yet, but sometimes Bethany can see it shimmering on them, the ebb and flow of the Fade as steady as the tide. And maybe she's just projecting the tight fear that lives around her throat like a vice.

But maybe not, and that scares her the most.

Alistair's in the kitchen, out of the armour with his shirtsleeves rolled up, elbow-deep in soap suds because of course he is. Her ridiculous man. Bethany can feel the smile curling the corners of her lips. It would be so easy to slip her arms around his waist from behind, to press her face into the center of his back because the affection between them is natural as air through lungs. As necessary as, too.

But the daisies in Ser Cullen's grip have started to droop for lack of water.

Bethany takes them from him. There's a crystal vase in the cubboard. It's ridiculous. Who even needs crystal vases? What sort of people need crystal vases, when here are refugees still starving? But crystal vases are only a symptom of a problem that Bethany wouldn't even know where to begin to fix, so she bumps Alistair with her hip on the way to catch his attention. "You know, you're lucky Ser Cullen still talks to you. You keep leaving him at my sister's mercy!"

"Hello to you, too," Alistair says with a start. He bends to kiss her cheek like an afterthought. "I told him not to bring the flowers. He wouldn't listen, said something about not being raised in a barn. What do I know about social niceties?"

Bethany smiles up at him. "Nothing, I'm sure."

"I'm _right here_ ," says Ser Cullen stiffly. "They're for you. Congratulations."

"Thank you, Ser Cullen," Bethany has to bite down on a giggle. He's so serious all the time that he invites the teasing; there's a reason Marian takes such a terrible glee in making him squirm. "I'd apologize for my sister, but you know what she's like."

"Ah, Beth, don't go giving him hope," Alistair says, shaking his head mournfully. "He's half in love with her as it is."

"I am _not_ ," says Ser Cullen, even more stiffly than before. He's got the look of an insulted pigeon, faintly red and beginning to puff up in offense, which is unhelpful because it only makes the whole situation funnier. Whatever mourning Alistair had managed to hold onto cracks and shatters as he and Bethany burst into laughter, sunny gold in the early afternoon.

"You are a little," Bethany says, sheepishly, like an apology. "I don't think you mean to be, but you—you do sort of seem to be?"

Ser Cullen makes a sound rather like a dying goat staggering up a hill to die with some dignity. It is incredibly unattractive. Bethany has to hide her face in Alistair's chest to keep from losing her composure all over again and probably hurting Ser Cullen's feelings.

Alistair, however, has no such compunction, and proceeds to laugh himself silly.

(This may or may not be why Alistair and Bethany do not have any friends. It absolutely has nothing to do with the fact that she's a mage and he's a templar, and that those two things tend to stand in direct opposition to one another. It _certainly_ doesn't have anything to do with the fact that they're related to Marian Hawke. Absolutely nothing. For _sure_.)

"Don't be mean, Alistair, it's not his fault! You know how Marian is when she wants something—"

"Mean, now, am I—"

"I _am_ here for a reason," Ser Cullen says, loudly over the sound of Alistair and Bethany flirting back and forth. The things he puts up with, honestly.

"A reason that isn't bringing my sister flowers?"

Alistair's mouth quirks against Bethany's hair. "Who's mean _now_?" he murmurs, and Bethany just smiles beneath the sour look that Ser Cullen shoots them both and proceeds to ignore them entirely.

"It's about Ser Emeric. He won't listen to me, it's going to get him killed," Ser Cullen says.

"Oh, Maker, again? Meredith's going to kill us, we were supposed to get him to stop that,"

Alistair sighs with his whole body, closes his eyes. "If he's found another body…"

"If he's found another body, we're all in trouble," says Ser Cullen, glum.

"Finding bodies? What are we on about, then?" asks Bethany's sister, leaning against the doorframe, casual as anything. She's probably been listening the whole time, as she does not have a drop of shame in her entire body.

"Emeric. He's still investigating the murdered girls," says Alistair.

Marian's eyes flash ice blue with memory. "Investigating murdered girls? And I wasn't invited?"

"He wont's stop pestering the guard," Alistair shrugs, chin hooked over Bethany's shoulder. "Aveline gave me horrible eyes the last time we played Wicked Grace, he's making them look bad."

"Because _that's_ difficult," says Marian, but there's no heart in it. Her gaze is far away, focused far out on the Waking Sea; it's that pensive quiet _measuring_ look that she gets sometimes when she's making a decision. She glances over Alistair and Bethany twined in the same chair, then Ser Cullen. "Do you think he's wrong?"

Alistair hesitates. Bethany can feel it, the way he fills up his lungs with air pressing into her back just a little bit off-beat, just a little bit fidget-wrong. Neither she nor Alistair had been there when her sister had first met Ser Emeric, and while Marian's never been particularly _chatty_ about most of the nonsense she throws herself into headfirst and laughing, she'd not been willing to talk about that trip to Darktown nor its' Gallows aftermath at all. There are some things that Alistair and Marian agree not to talk about, and this had been one of them.

Bethany leans back into Alistair's chest. It's the best way she knows how to let him know she's there; she knows it works because he settles. Settles, all of his bones unlocking, grip going slack. _Settles_.

"I wouldn't bet on it," Alistair says. His mouth twists grim, but his fingers find hers, and that's a little better.

"And you?" Marian asks Ser Cullen, ignoring the way he goes still as a startled deer. She's very intent when she wants something, is Marian, all new-dagger-sharp silences beneath a brittle sugar coating. This is never more true than it is right now: she stares at Ser Cullen until he flushes, and then she stares some more. "Do you think we should leave the guard to it? Or shall we go have an adventure and ruin Aveline's day?"

Bethany thinks that Marian's definition of _adventure_ needs to a little less—well, a little less _Marian_ , honestly—but she doesn't say that. Ser Cullen mumbles something under his breath, still incandescently red from the tips of his ears to below the collar of his armour. There's no hope for him, really, and Alistair smothers a hoarse laugh in the curve of Beth's shoulder because he's thinking it, too.

"I'm going to take that as agreement to the adventure," Marian says. She snaps her fingers. "Up you get, templar, we all get to be useful today! But not you two—" and here she breaks off to give Alistair and Bethany the most archly superior look Bethany has ever seen grace her sister's face, "—you two are going to stay here and be parents, like sensible people who have children."

"Mari, maybe we should—"

"No, absolutely not," Marian says cheerfully, yanking Ser Cullen into standing. She's so big, is Marian; she fills an entire room just by gracing it with her presence. It shows, now, because Ser Cullen follows Bethany's sister like he's starved for the attention, like he couldn't say no if he tried.

People get that look about them often, when Bethany's sister is involved.

Marian has him halfway out the door before she pauses to look back at Bethany and Alistair, both of whom are sort of blinking like they've just been smacked across the gob.

"Stay out of trouble, you two," she says, almost fond.

And then she closes the door behind her, and Bethany and Alistair are alone.

For a very long moment, it is very quiet.

"I think she just adopted Ser Cullen," Bethany says faintly, at last. "Oh, Maker, she's going to introduce him to Isabela, he's going to die. They're going to embarrass him to death!"

Alistair chokes a horrible laugh into her skin, and then they're both quaking with mirth; infected with trickle-down hysteria that bounds between them, growing exponentially with every refraction back and forth. The laughter fills up the kitchen all the way up to the rafters, out the window and into the blue sea air.

Hightown is thankful for it. There's never much laughter, here.

"We're terrible," Bethany gasps, at last. She shakes her head into the crook of Alistair's neck. " _Terrible_. He's never going to forgive us."

"He'll survive," says Alistair. He grins up at her with his arms around her waist, the glint in his eye familiar and mischievous as it has ever been. "Hello there. I've missed you."

Bethany smiles at him. "I haven't gone anywhere."

"Missed you anyway," Alistair tells her. He's still grinning, but there's a strange thread of sincerity to the words, like he actually means them. It turns his whole face soft and oh, Bethany remembers why she fell in love with him in the first place. Because he looks at her like this, like she's the center of the Maker's known world, like he could look forever and it wouldn't be enough.

Andraste, no one else has ever looked at her like that.

(And somehow, she knows precisely what he's getting at. _I've missed you_ , because they're both so busy; Bethany with the twins and her mother and cleaning up Marian's messes before they get too big to clean up, Alistair with the templars and the Gallows and mitigating the damage that Knight-Commander Meredith wrings from Kirkwall before the city becomes a corpse. Sometimes it feels like the only time she sees him is when he's crawling into bed to curl around her after the sun has gone down. _I've missed you_.)

"I've missed you, too," Bethany murmurs. She shifts a little closer, until they're close enough to breathe the same air. His hand comes up to the cup of her ribs and she shivers, shivers, shivers.

"Ticklish," Alistair mumbles against her neck. She can feel the feather-light pull of a smile against her throat.

"You _know_ that," she says, and he does, of course he does, unfair crooked grin and crooked nose and crooked sense of humour, all done up in gold from his hair to his heart. Of course Alistair knows.

"I do know that," he agrees, and Bethany has to tip her head down to kiss him.

"You are going to be the death of me," Bethany tells him.

He has the gall to kiss her right back instead of apologizing, sealing them mouth to mouth. Bethany wants him close, wants his hands all over her, and it's shaking and shivering and _needing_ , hungry and hungrier, a sharp intake of air at the rough drag of his breeches against the soft skin of her thighs. The pound of his pulse beneath her fingers, and oh, Maker, all of her blood rushes through her, thrilling with it. _I want, I want, I want_ , her magic sings, stings, surges up to sparkle along her fingertips. She wants and she needs and she's missed him, she's missed him so _much_ —

"Are you two quite done?" Mother asks delicately from the doorway.

"Why is your mother like this," Alistair mutters, pupils blown wide, mouth kiss-bitten, and it's not a question. The purple-white glitter of lightning wrangles itself to a slow death.

"I don't _know_ ," Bethany says, _laments_ , too low for Mother to hear. She's the colour of harlot's blush. Alistair's thumb presses into the divot in her throat, and he's just as hungry as Bethany is. "We're doomed."

"Bethany," Mother says, patiently; she's enjoying this far too much, "Alistair. Are you two listening to me?"

"Yes, Mother," Bethany says, and then dropping back into a whisper for her husband's hearing alone, again, " _Doomed_."

"Well, _you_ are. I'm going to check on the twins," Alistair says into Bethany's ear. The _traitor_ , he's carefully detangling her fingers from where they're twisted into his shirt. Andraste, he really is going to be the death of her, she wants to climb inside of his skin.

Bethany lets him go, murmurs, "Coward. Come get me if they're hungry?"

"Never said I wasn't. Love you," he says, and kisses the top of her head before dashing off. The soft-headed idiot, Bethany thinks fondly, he just doesn't want to deal with Mother's teasing. It's terrible, really.

(Then again, no one _wants_ to deal with Mother's teasing, so maybe he's not one with a soft head here at all.)

"Hello, Mother," Bethany sighs.

"Hello, dear," Leandra Hawke says. She crooks an eyebrow at Bethany, and for a moment, mother and daughter simply stare at one another. This isn't the first time Leandra has walked in on her daughter and her daughter's husband with their clothing half-off, and it likely won't be the last, but it never gets any less traumatising for everyone involved. "You're lucky I'm not your sister."

Well, that's true.

"Mari usually has the decency to knock," Bethany says, not quite able to quell the heat in her cheeks. It's a lie, because Marian Hawke wouldn't know decency if it socked her in the face, but it's the principle of the thing. "It's not outrageous, we are married!"

"I didn't say anything," says Mother loftily, but there's a truly horrible twinkle in her eye as she says, "But I am glad that children haven't ruined you for one another, that's always a concern, your father and I—"

" _Mother_!" Bethany squeaks, covers her face with her hands. "Are you trying to embarrass me to death? _Honestly_!"

Leandra laughs high and clear, the echoes of it bouncing up and up into the rafters. She reaches over to link her arm through Bethany's, tugging her in the direction of the kitchen. "If I'm not here to tease you, darling, who would?"

"Oh, I don't know, Mari does that well enough—"

"Your sister has nothing on what I'm capable of," says Mother.

Bethany doesn't doubt that for a second. She's about to retort, something that will probably get her in trouble, because while Mother's mostly recovered from Carver's loss, there are still times when it's not wise to push. They turn the corner into the kitchen.

"More flowers?" Bethany asks, stopping short.

More flowers. So many flowers, in fact, a hundred of them, white petals and tied with shiny blue ribbon. They cover the long table, a too-sweet, over-saturated perfume that makes Bethany a little dizzy. For a moment, it's hard to breathe, and then she goes to open a window. Fresh air spills in, salt wafting on the Waking Sea, and it cuts the sweetness down to nothing. Beth breathes clean, again.

Maker's breath, as though people haven't given them _enough_ flowers, already.

"Who are they from?"

Mother holds them up to a critical eye. They're white with long curling petals, centers dusted the faintest pink. They don't _look_ like congratulations flowers. If Bethany didn't know better, she'd say they looked like—like _courting_ flowers—

"My grandmother used to grow these," Mother says, very softly. She's touching them a kind of awed reverence, like she'd hold the last breath of fresh air before a fire. It's so careful, is the thing. "Lady's Grace. We used to braid them into our hair."

"We?"

Mother looks up, startled, like she'd forgotten that Bethany was in the room. Maybe she did. She sets the flowers down on the table, so infinitely gentle, and for a moment Bethany sees her as she must have been when she was young—a spill of long ink-dark hair, bright blue eyes in an unlined face, a carefree smile buried in the corners of her mouth ready to appear at any moment. "Your aunt Revka and I."

"What was she like?" is out of Bethany's mouth before she can pull it back. Mother never talks about her family, and there's no interacting with Uncle Gamlen even on a good day; what Bethany knows of the Amell family has all been gleaned from listening at keyholes and whatever Marian's found out that she's been willing to share.

Bethany misses Carver, all of a sudden. Maker knows, Bethany's always missing Carver, but this is different.

She misses her twin, because he ought to be _here_ for this.

"She was my best friend," Mother says, after a very long silence. Leandra closes her eyes a little helplessly, and it's here in the ancient Amell halls, in the spill of dusty-gold late afternoon sunshine, that Bethany finally begins to understand what Mother sacrificed to love Father. It wasn't just a title and lands. It was a whole life, responsibilities and parents and friends, and Mother gave it all up to run away with Malcolm Hawke because the thought of being parted was worse than the thought of losing everything she'd ever known.

Bethany thinks of Alistair, and wonders if she's more like her mother than she thought.

"We used to get up to all sorts, it would put your sister to shame—" Bethany highly doubts this, because even _she_ doesn't know what Marian gets up to, but she'll let her mother have it, "—and we had the same taste in bad decisions. I picked your father, and she… well, you know you have cousins in the Circles."

Mother's rosewater gentleness stays, but there's an edge of sea-salt bitterness to it, now. She reaches, hand hovering over Bethany's elbow. There are a lot of unsaid things in the gesture, too many to list, but they all come back to family and loss and magic. Magic, it always comes back to magic.

Maker, if Aunt Revka was a mage herself, Bethany wouldn't be surprised.

(That _would_ be par for the course, wouldn't it.)

"Your cousins went to the Circles, and your aunt disappeared. I didn't want that for you, darling," Mother says. "I don't want it for your children, either."

Bethany nods, swallowing hard. The twins are upstairs asleep in their bassinets with Alistair to watch them, little hands curled into littler fists. They're so perfect and beautiful and she loves them _so much_ that sometimes it hurts to look at them, the swelling in her chest too big and bright for nameable emotion. This is her family: her mother, her daughters, her Alistair. Her _family_.

"I don't want it for them, either," Bethany manages. "Mother, I—I'm scared, I'm so _scared_. What if they get hurt? What if something happens and I can't stop it? What if—"

Leandra throws back her head and laughs, the sound of it filling up the room. "Oh Bethany, love," she says, with her mirth still in her mouth, "that's what being a mother is all about!"

Two minutes later, Marian crashes in howling about murdered girls and rings and things, dragging a stunned Ser Cullen and a less-stunned Isabela, blood-splattered clothing and gnashing teeth. There's a grief to them; Merrill's wide green eyes are oceans of sorrow peeking out from behind Bianca and Varric, Fenris' armour more spiky than ever. They look hunted, haunted, _horrified_.

And Bethany forgets all about the white flowers.

—

"Look what I found!" Marian shouts, three weeks later and parading in through the front door like she owns the world. "Friends!"

She's covered in blood and a flush like victory with her daggers tucked into her belt. There's a strange, frenetic kind of tremble to her, all eyes too wide and teeth too sharp. This should be more alarming than it is; Marian Hawke tromping through the front door covered in blood is a fairly regular occurrence these days. Third time this week, even.

 _Friends_ is a loose term for it. _Friends_ is the loosest term for it; _friends_ doesn't even really begin to cover it, nor can it, nor _should_ it. It's a drippy-cold day inKingsway, fall beginning to grey into winter. The cloud-cover is thick this time of year as the storms far out on the Amaranthine move inland across the Waking Sea, leaving Kirkwall chilled and wet in their wake.

And Marian brings home _friends_.

It had been the usual crew, at first: Isabela and Varric arguing good-naturedly over Merrill's head, Aveline trying to contain them but managing a thin smile for Mother, Anders with his eyes smeared perpetually exhausted, Fenris and Sebastian bringing up the rear. The Hanged Man would be ringing empty without her sister's friends there to fill it.

Except that there are two people between Anders and Fenris and Sebastian, and one of them is Marian.

Marian, who's also standing in the foyer, still covered in blood, grinning with the smoking remains of mania between her teeth. Marian, bright red paint streaked across her face. Marian, short dark hair tousled with wind and rimed with salt. Marian, slender shoulders tucked into her the cave of her chest, in filthy robes, hiding a tiny elf with pale hair in her shadow. Marian, Marian, Marian.

The earth tilts.

Andraste's blood, what unholy union is _this_.

Slowly, differences rise to the surface like bubbles popping, and Bethany's vision rights itself. No, there's only one Marian, but the other woman—the other woman could be Marian, too, if Marian had long hair, if Marian had soft hands, if Marian had fear tattooed into her eyes.

But no. Bethany recognizes that look. She recognizes that _fear_.

This Marian is a _mage_.

Bethany is about to open her mouth to say something, but Marian—the real Marian, her sister Marian, killer and queen and cut-throat, _that_ Marian—gets there first. "If I may introduce Solona Amell and Neria Surana," she says with a flourish. "Just broke out of the Aeonar, and looking for a place to stay! I thought it would be appropriate."

"We don't mean to impose—" Not-Marian starts. Her voice is the smooth, educated lilt of a Ferelden Circle mage, but soft, as though she's not used to speaking in front of people. When the entire room turns to stare at her, she turns faintly pink.

(It's this faint pinking that convinces Bethany that this isn't just her sister playing a very bad trick. Marian Hawke has never blushed in her entire life; this woman, whoever she is, is not Bethany's sister. Thank the Maker.)

Frankly, Bethany didn't know that her sister had an identical twin. _Frankly_ , this is knowledge that Bethany could have gone her entire life without, and still been perfectly content. She could have never known this cousin-sister, and she would have been fine.

But there it is: Marian Hawke has a soft-spoken mirror image named Solona Amell, who is _also a mage_.

Alistair looks at Bethany, and says, "Only your sister."

"Only my sister," Bethany echoes, aching inside.

But it's not until later, after everyone's gone home save for Isabela and Varric, and Mother has settled Solona and Neria—who refuse to be parted, clinging a little too tight; the Aeonar leaves an ugly mark a league wide—in one of the spare rooms, that Marian finally deigns to clear things up. She's sprawled at the table scattered with cards in a loose shirt washed colourless, and she rakes her hair back from her face with practised fingers.

"Anders is running a mage underground," she says, quiet, measured, gaze flicking over the fall of cards. Varric's cheating. "I wasn't just going to leave them there."

"That she looks exactly like you has nothing to do with it, huh, Hawke?" Varric says. He's still cheating, cards flickering in and out of his fingers as he deals. No one calls him on it.

"Well, there is that," Marian says, fluttering her lashes at him, face warped into long shadows in the firelight. "Two of me? You know how vain I am, I couldn't pass that up!"

"Vain, sweetness? You? Never," Isabela bursts into rich laughter. She's wearing one of Marian's shirts and no pants. They might be tumbling one another. They also might not be tumbling one another. Bethany doesn't ask questions about who her sister happens to be tumbling, anymore; it's not information she wants, anyhow.

"One of you is more than enough," Alistair mutters in Marian's general direction. He loops his arm around Bethany's shoulders to pull her close, until they're nearly sitting in the same seat. "The Knight-Commander is going to be on her like nothing you've ever seen, you know that, right? She's furious at me for not giving her anything as it is."

"Our dear Knight-Commander has been trying to teach me a lesson for months, and this is going to knot her right up. Now there are two of me," Marian smiles nastily. "I can be two places at once. She's going to _hate_ it, I can hardly wait."

"Mari, please," Bethany says, wincing. "Do you have to?"

They don't need more violence, honestly. The Gallows are full to bursting, gutters running red with blood out into the sea. They're all on such thin ice already; the war hovers on the horizon, the entire city on a tipping point, and Bethany can taste it already. It turns her stomach, not just for the death but for the fear it inspires. She loves her sister, but Andraste knows they've all lost so much.

Alistair smile queasily into her hair. He feels it, too.

Marian drops the nastiness, but there's still something distinctly horrible about the way she shrugs. "Solona is a mage. She's as safe here as she'd be anywhere else. Safer, even, given our templar problem. And her little shadow is handy in a fight."

She doesn't say anything about what kind of fight, nor where on the Maker's green earth they found them. It doesn't matter. They're here now, a mage who wears her elder sister's face and her pale elven after-image.

And Bethany learned a long time ago that it's better not to question Marian's whims.

(People tend to live longer when they don't.)

"Perhaps we shouldn't tell Ser Cullen," Marian muses, a strange little twist to her lips. She leans back in her chair, tilting sick back and forth as she thinks about it. "Although, springing that on him might be a little _too_ cruel. I do make him suffer."

"What does Cullen have to do with anything?" Alistair straightens a little. He glances down at Bethany. She shrugs, listing a little. It's late and she's tired, and the cave of his chest calls like soft sheets and safety and sleep.

The clatter of chair legs on the floor is so loud, wood against stone, and then it's just her sister with her sister's bright blue eyes, her sister's shock of ash-dark hair, her sister's terrible smile, all hunkered down and backlit in the glow of the fire. There's an edge to her, now, red metal death that Bethany knows only too well. Bloodlust.

Marian grins at the pair of them with all of her teeth.

"Who do you think he's been pining for?" she laughs, a white flash in the dark. "It certainly hasn't been me!"

—

As it turns out, they needn't have worried.

Solona rarely speaks, the kind of person to hide behind the fall of her hair rather than confront anything that's going on around her. She has a tendency to close herself in her rooms when there's a possibility of company; she and her little elven shadow spend their days split between the gardens and the library, leaving the estate only when it's absolutely unavoidable. But she's gentle and she's kind, and Bethany finds herself answering Neria's curious questions with the same near-exasperated fondness that seems to leak from Solona's skin.

Between the twins and Alistair and the rest of the world, Bethany's days fill up.

Harvestmere is white, and the first biting days of Firstfall are grey.

Liana and Carina are just learning to walk.

They're babbling back and forth on the floor in the study, two perfectly identical sets of features rising and falling in baby laughter. Alistair's laying on the floor beside them, watching raptly. He's still amazed by them, though Bethany can't imagine that he ever _won't_ be amazed by them. Every few minutes he glances up at her, and they both have to stop and process the fact that they're really here. They're really here, in a place that could be a home, and the sky hasn't come falling down.

" _Look_ at them, Beth," Alistair says, so quietly. "Maker, I…"

"I know," Bethany murmurs, sinking down next to him. The twins' voices rise into a happy burbling giggle, the sound they always make when both their parents are within reach. The sun slants in low through the window; the afternoon is rapidly slipping away into bruise-coloured evening.

"They're something else."

"Magic? Is that the word you're looking for?"

"Yes," Alistair says fervently. He presses a kiss to the thin skin inside her knee. "Magic."

Bethany flushes a little. She always does, and she probably always will. Alistair just brings it out in her, that shy sweet something that she doesn't have a name for. Beth reaches over to run a hand through his hair, watches as he relaxes into the touch. It still takes him a minute, like even now, four and a half years into this relationship, he's still unused to basic kindness. She thinks of elfroot and oiled metal, skin and soap. Every day is better than the last.

Alistair looks up at her, and smiles.

(Andraste, but does she love him.)

"Mamma!" one of the twins shouts just then, and Bethany laughs, settling down on their other side like the closing half of an open parenthesis. She and Alistair, an aperfect circle, Liana and Carina trying to figure out how to stand, safe in between.

They stay there, curled up on the floor, until the sun disappears from the window entirely. The day's been tumbles and tears, baby-laughter and grabby hands, chewed-on wooden toys scattered around the room. In the late afternoon half-light,

"Someone's sleepy," Bethany murmurs, lips quirking. Carina's already asleep; Liana yawns. A year old, and already so determined. But babies aren't very good at staying awake for long periods of time, even when they've grown up a little.

"Bedtime, I think," Alistair says, grinning.

"For everyone," she agrees, whisper-laughter in the words. "I'm exhausted."

It's nearing supper, whatever Bodahn's decided on for evemeal already beginning to scent the air spicy-warm. The twins go easy, tucked sheltered into the crook of Beth's neck, the hollow valley in Alistair's elbow. It's nothing to get them to their bassinets without the usual fussing; it was a long day, for everyone.

For a while, Bethany and Alistair just stand there, watching their daughters breathe.

The rise and fall of their chests never gets boring, somehow.

But eventually, real life calls. There's tomorrow to plan, and supper to eat, and that book that Bethany's been putting off finishing sitting on the nighttable. The twins haven't quite figured out how to sleep the whole night through, either, so that's not entirely helpful. Having children turns out to be a cycle of exhaustion and unrelenting love, an impossible, incredible mix of things that Bethany never really thought she'd be allowed to have.

Alistair makes things possible. Bethany makes things sweet.

Together, they make things good.

He slings an arm around her shoulders, kisses the top of her head. Bethany leans into his side, the solid wide warmth of him a perfect place to hide from the rest of the world. When he nudges her towards the door, Bethany goes, caught up in his sweeping tide.

They make their way out of the residential wing, following the enticing smell of cooking meat and fresh rolls.

But before they get there, the sound of raised voices catches both of their attention.

Bethany and Alistair blink at one another, and go to investigate.

"—inside, Mother," Bethany's sister is saying sharply, pitched hard and low and very nearly scared. There's something ugly writ in the lines of her voice, and Bethany and Alistair turn the corner into the drawing room just as she continues, "There's Qunari poison on the loose in Lowtown, we don't have _time_ for this, so please just stay inside tonight—"

"What? Darling, are you sure? How do you—"

"I'm dealing with it," Marian says. She whirls, whistling for Dog even as she strides to the chest where she keeps her spare gear. Knives go flying every which direction; Bethany only just manages to avoid taking a dagger to the shoulder because Alistair yanks her out of its way, and she thanks the Maker that the twins are too small to get very far before they get too tired and have to be put to bed. They're there now, safely out of harm's way, and the rest of the Hawke family aim to take cover while Marian rages her way through like an icy winter storm.

Bethany has watcher her sister go to war her entire life.

This is nothing new.

Marian is very particular about her pre-war rituals. In some ways, it's very much like how Alistair deconstructs himself when he takes the templar armour off when he comes home, only in reverse: Marian builds herself up with pauldrons and midnight-dyed leathers, lethal-looking gauntlets that turn her hands into nightmare claws and spiky knee-guards, all of her coloured black and bruised. Daggers last, a deadly gleam strapped to her back.

And as ever, wet red paint slashed across her nose, running like an open wound.

Her sister looks like a murder, and Bethany's guts turn themselves into knots.

"What's going on, Mari?"

Marian's eyes settle of the set of Bethany's shoulders. Everything about her goes slack-soft for a moment, ice eyes and dark hair and stone of a heart beneath her clothes. Her mouth pulls up into a lopsided grin, a strange thing almost too sincere for her devil-may-care attitude.

"Just going to stop the end of the world, nothing new," Marian says. "Stay with Mother while I'm gone, will you?"

Bethany's hands curl into fists.

(It's never going to end. The Hawke family bears their loses with dignity, but one day her older sister isn't going to come back, and then it'll just be her alone. Or as alone as alone can be when alone has children and a husband, but—siblings are different. She thinks of Alistair, his own very difficult issues with siblings, and knows it in her soul. Siblings are different.)

She's going to protest.

She _is_.

But someone else gets there first.

"I'll come with you," Solona says from the doorway. "Someone should."

"I'm sorry," Marian doesn't turn towards their cousin. She keeps her gaze on Bethany, and there's nothing in her expression at all. "Did I hear that right? You want to come? To Lowtown? Maker, have you ever left the estate?"

"I have," she says. Solona is tall and quiet, dressed in a simple undyed shift, a shattered-mirror image of Bethany's sister. Her knuckles curl pale around the doorframe, and she swallows hard, staring between the Hawke women each in turn. There's no way to mistake them for anything except members of the same family; they all carry themselves the same, defiance and determination in the spine. It's writ into the lines of Solona's face, hard as diamond and twice as shiny. "And you'll need a healer."

"We've got Anders," Marian says, steadily. She finally turns, looks Solona over with the air of a battle-worn general inspecting a new recruit, half-exhausted and half desperate for the help though trying not to show it. "And Bethy, though I'm not dragging her into this. There might be a fair few templars down there, cousin. And I know how you feel about templars."

(Bethany doesn't want to be dragged into it either, thanks Mari.)

But the noise echoes all the way up from Lowtown, a distant cacophony of coughing and pain that crescendos its way all the way up to the Viscount's palace. Bethany thinks of the dead flatness that had painted her sister's voice when she'd said _there's Qunari poison on the loose in Lowtown, we don't have_ time _for this_ , and she wonders if there's going to be anything left.

Marian's expression tightens. "Aveline's waiting outside. If you're coming, we're going now."

"Let me get my staff," Solona says. There's movement in the shadows behind her. "Nerry, I—"

"Me as well," the elven girl says. She blinks wide blue-green eyes underneath a white fringe, still somehow a shadow even though she's so pale she's almost a ghost. "If you go away somewhere, I go, too."

Something eases in Solona's face. "We're coming with you," she tells Marian, like it's simple. She takes a slow breath, in and then out; fortification, perhaps. "Templars or not, people need us. Let me go get our staves, we'll just be a moment."

Solona disappears back into the bowels of the estate in a blue-eyed flash, Neria a ghostly after-image. The space they leave is a gouged-out hollow, aching with leftover perfume and the crackling spark of lightning's smoke.

"Well," Marian says, lips quirking. "That's alright, then."

But it's not alright. There's poison on the wind tonight, and Bethany wraps her arms around herself like a shield. Maker knows she hates it when things like this happen. Marian's got that look on her face, though, like she wants to consume the world entire, that fervent shine to the eyes. The hunt's already in her blood, Bethany knows it, and there's no stopping it now.

She waits only long enough for Solona and Neria to return, and then she's heading for the door.

"Stay with Mother, Bethy," Marian says, over her shoulder, the last coherent thought she'll have before she the sun rises; keeping her sister safe, the way she always does. It's would be sick if it wasn't so needed. "Please."

She can't say anything at all.

The door closes, and Bethany turns. "Alistair, I—"

Bethany hadn't noticed he'd left her side.

"I'll keep on eye on her," he's telling Mother very quietly, already pulling on his gauntlets. They shine in the lamplight. "All three of them, actually, I'll make sure they don't get into too much trouble—"

"What?" Bethany manages. "You're going, too?"

"I should," Alistair says. "Your sister is—"

"You can't," Bethany cuts him off, sucking in air erratically. No, he can't, he can't go, he'll get killed if she's not there to watch his back because if she doesn't do it then who _will_? Marian will be preoccupied with saving the day the way she always is, Solona and Neria will be preoccupied with saving each other, and he'll take a spear to the back because he'll be on his own and she'll be _alone_ in this city that would eat her alive if it could.

(This is stupid and childish, but Maker, she can't help it. She doesn't know what she'll do without him.)

Bethany tries not to blink, refuses to look at Mother because this is none of her business anyway. "You _can't_ , Alistair. Please don't."

Alistair kind of grins down at her, a growing thing soft and fond in his gaze. "Someone has to, and better me than you."

"No, _not_ better you than me!" she says. There's something stuck in her throat. Why does he always _do_ this? Why does he always have to go running off to get hurt, only to come back hollowed out and not himself anymore? It's the templars all over again, crossing the sea and building a home and then having the whole thing be torn to shreds because Bethany's sister just _does_ things without regard for anyone around her, without regard for any single other person. And the rebuilding has been difficult, but—but there's more than just her to consider, now.

Maker, Bethany won't survive losing him, and neither will the twins.

"What if you don't come _back_?" she cracks out.

(It's a cyclical conversation, but Bethany doesn't think they're ever really going to stop.)

"You'll be alright," Alistair says. He moves in close and for a minute he touches her cheek with just the tips of his fingers, a careful benediction. "You always are, love."

"If you let my sister get you killed, I am never going to forgive you," Bethany whispers.

And Alistair laughs into her mouth when he kisses her, like he's trying not to say goodbye, like he's trying to keep her beneath his skin, like he's trying not to let go. It's not biting the way it could be, or even the way Bethany wants it to be; just gentle and soft and pastel-sweet, precisely all the things that he makes her feel. That little flickering flame in her chest, growing warm.

Bethany would hate him for it, if she could.

But she can't so she doesn't, and when her sister leads them off, head held high and shoulders throw back like she's going to war, Bethany watches them until they disappear into the gathering night. She doesn't shake to pieces, won't _let_ herself shake to pieces; Bethany holds herself still as a stone in a river, forces herself to keep her eyes open.

Because here is what they don't tell you about watching the people you love go off to save the world:

The waiting is the worst part.

The waiting is the part that gnaws away a person's insides. It's the part that gives the venom the time to sink in, to twist and change, the part that kills because it's so hard, so _hard_ to stay on a knife's deadly edge. There's no relaxing, with waiting, just prickles of awareness and a winding anxiety that gets more and more terrible as time goes on.

It settles into Bethany now, the waiting. Lowtown is always aglow, the red-gold incandescence of the forges never going all the way out, but tonight it's obscured by a rising haze, silver-grey cut through with strange drifts of an ill-looking yellow-green. It's fog, and it rolls in off the bay as lightning thrums through her veins.

It's a precursor to a storm, and while Kirkwall could always do with a good wash, maybe tonight isn't the best night for it.

(Bethany's family is out there, underneath that ominous sky. Alistair, Marian… even Carver, even her twin swallowed down into the dark, all of them are swept up into that great gaping blackness. The Maker hasn't turned His back on them once but twice, and the prayer that rises in her throat is ruthlessly strangled. This is no time for prayer.)

She paces the night away, back and forth. Static trails in her footfalls, little crackles of white-edged-purple energy popping around her ankles, and even though Bethany leaves her staff in the closet these days, her knuckles curl around nothing in the search for that familiar weight.

Mother watches Bethany with old eyes, chips of cold summer sky in her face, with her needlework left abandoned in her lap. "Sit down, Bethany. You're going to wear a hole in the carpet," she says, almost idle.

 _The carpet could do with a few more holes_ , Bethany wants to snap, but that's Marian's ugliness behind her teeth, and it's not fair. Leandra Hawke has lived through more than her share of loss; Carver's absence is suddenly stark, and Bethany thinks she might be sick with it.

(Maker knows, she misses her brother.)

Under the challenging rise of her mother's eyebrows, she sits.

Together, Bethany and Leandra watch the sky.

Time passes, although she couldn't say how much. The night seems to slow to a standstill even as it speeds along, but the waiting eats at the back of her eyelids. It wouldn't be so awful if she could see the stars, but they're obscured by the thick mantle of fog that cloaks the city, and without those guiding pinpricks of light, it's very difficult to gauge just where they stand. Hightown sleeps 'til noon most days just because it can.

But eventually, the black leavens into lighter shades.

And there in the pre-dawn are Solona and Alistair, stumbling out of an earth-bound cloud to carry her sister home.

 _Oh, Andraste,_ Bethany thinks, heart hammering in her throat.

They get through the door, all three of them weary and covered in blood, knees buckling and covered in a grimy layer of greenish grease-dust. Things hang in suspension for a solid minute where no one says anything at all; Bethany with her heart in her throat, Mother and Bodahn staring in quiet horror, Alistair and Solona still trying to keep Marian standing, and Marian…

Even half-dead and shaking, Marian is Marian.

"Well," Bethany's sister coughs, _coughs_. There's a film of that sick yellow-green clinging to her fingertips, slick along the blades of her daggers. The poison. Oh, Maker. "Let's never do _that_ again."

It breaks whatever tension was curdling in the air, and while Mother rushes over to fuss at her sister, Bethany simply crosses the room and reaches up to touch Alistair's face. There's a death in his dark eyes that outweighs the cut scored along his cheek, the blood on his knuckles.

"Are you alright?" she asks, quietly, eyebrows pulled together and worry in her mouth. "You look…"

"I'm fine, Beth," he murmurs, though the bad tremble to his hands says different. He doesn't fold into her, not entirely, but it's a close thing—his armour keeps in the way of the speed of the collapse. Instead his arms go around her and his face goes to the crook of her throat and together they just breathe for a moment, trying to get their bearings. Andraste, she knew he shouldn't have gone alone. They're no good without one another, and they should both know that by now.

But she doesn't want to ask, because she doesn't even know what she could say. Beth thinks of their daughters, barely a year old with their big dark eyes and their shy little smiles, so young and so fragile.

They need him, and he needs her. That hasn't changed.

Bethany puts a hand on the back of his neck, and lets him hold on.

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it hasn't been six+ months what are you talking about


	5. even though it gets darker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look at that, my dumbfuck hyperfocus was useful for a change

—

.

.

.

.

.

Things change, after the poison.

Bethany can't quite explain it. It's a tension in the air, the strange hulking silhouettes of Qunari horns superimposed in shadow over the Chantry's sunburst like an omen. Marian comes home to the estate with the grim determination of someone balancing on a knife's edge; she's been playing go-between for the Arishok down in the Qunari compound and the Viscount for the last half year, and the wear of it is beginning to show. Kirkwall's leashed intolerance has been set aside and allowed to thicken for far too long, far past the point of no return. Something has to give, because between the Revered Mother, the Arishok, and Viscount Dumar himself, the entire city's about to erupt into violence.

And Marian is no politician.

(She never did have the patience to play the long game.)

But life goes on, as it is so inclined to do:

"He's a _what_?"

"A Dreamer," sighs Keeper Marethari. She's looking older, deep dark creases beneath green eyes, the crags in a face that even vallaslin fails to alleviate. Bethany remembers her differently, or maybe just happier. Marethari won't look at Merrill, even though the mage girl hovers at Marian's shoulder, half curious, half aching for attention. It would be ugly if it weren't so sad, and it's only the easy arm Isabela has tucked into the crook of Merrill's elbow that keeps it all from falling apart.

In so many ways, Marian's merry bands of misfits have built their homes in one another, and Andraste, Bethany shouldn't even _be_ here. Her home is built into Alistair's chest, in her daughter's laughter, in her mother's steel-grey hair. But her sister is built into the foundations, so perhaps it counts. Homes are varied things, after all.

"And that means…?" Marian's arching an eyebrow.

"It means I have nothing left to save him with," Marethari says. Her gaze passes over the boy's slumbering body; sleep is the body's natural defense, its last bastion of safety when everything's gone up in smoke. "His talents are beyond my own, already."

Feynriel shifts, thin-faced and wan in the dim alienage light, nearly leached clean of colour. His mother sits quiet and worried at his side, and he's not even eighteen.

Something twinges in Bethany's chest.

The little she knows of Dreaming is nothing based on concrete fact. Most of it is leftover from Father's lectures, though he'd never spoken about it at length because truly, Bethany thinks he didn't know very much about it, either. It's a mish-mash of stories and legends, soft hauntings in the Fade, wisps from beyond the Veil into an endless sky. But always there was an emphasis on power, and nightmares, and how hard it was to come back.

The Fade is a dangerous place to walk, if one does not have the right shoes.

Bethany looks at Alistair out of the corner of her eye. He'd insisted on coming when Marian had cheerfully throw around the words _ritual_ and _probably blood magic_ , which is fair because ritualistic blood magic and Marian Hawke are never a good combination. And Alistair is a templar. Whatever else he is, he is still that. But it won't be the first time he's broken his holy vows to give someone a better chance. It won't even be the first time this year. It won't even be the first time this _week_.

Sometimes Bethany thinks that he'd have been much happier with someone normal. Sometimes she loves him so much she thinks she might die of it. Always she's glad that he's here with her, instead.

"Well," Marian says, and it cuts through Bethany's musing like a knife, because that's her sister's _I've made a terrible decision and you are all going to regret knowing me_ voice, and it never bodes well for anyone. "This can't possibly go badly!"

Oh, Maker, what did she just miss.

But Isabela's mouth has pulled up in wide white smile beneath red-painted lips, and Merrill's cheeks have gone pink like someone's told her she's done something right and she can't quite hide how pleased she is about it. It's the Hawke effect, that thing that happens to everyone who stumbles into her sister's wake of destruction—she leaves carnage, does Marian, but there is no single person who doesn't shine beneath her regard.

"Wait, what?" Bethany asks.

"Don't you worry your pretty head about it, sweetness," Isabela says, hip popped out. Keeper Marethari's drawn a ritual circle on the floor around the boy's cot, and the pirate swaggers into it like the points of a star. "If anyone here is untemptable, it's you."

"I don't think that's a compliment," Bethany mutters under her breath.

Given the choked-off cackle that escapes Isabela's throat, Bethany thinks she's probably not wrong. _Not listening, I'm not listening_ , she chants to herself, even though it does no good. Isabela is incorrigible on a good day, never mind on a day when they're about to throw themselves into the Fade and hope they come out the other side alright.

"Children," Marian says, with the too-patient air of someone who's done this too many tines before. "We have a _job_ to do."

"Aw, Hawke, you're running all my fun, _someone_ needs to teach her about the birds and the bees—"

"She has twins, 'Bela, that ship's sailed," Marian reminds her consolingly, lips curling up soft and melting for a moment. If her heart's not in her throat, it must be in her toes, because it's no coincidence that sometimes Bethany catches her sister looking at Isabela the way she sometimes catches Alistair looking at _her_.

The difference, though, is that Bethany finds herself looking back when Alistair can see, specifically _so_ that Alistair can see.

Marian is useless at anything that isn't debauching serving girls or killing, and usually the pirate is neither of those, though she's fond of both. Because of course Marian's gone and fallen in love with someone just as messy as she is—there was never another option for Bethany's sister. Worse, Marian probably doesn't even know she's done it. Worst of all, Isabela probably wouldn't believe it, anyway.

_Maker_ , but Bethany is glad that she and Alistair never had the urge to play games with one another. Life is complicated enough.

"Hawke, it is time," Keeper Marethari says. Her face is lined with a wordless misery that Bethany sees only because Merrill's back is turned, and the Dalish Keeper does not bother to hide her desolation from a shem. "May I have a word?"

Marian turns, and Alistair takes the moment to catch Bethany's wrist.

"I don't like this," he mutters. His gaze flickers between Bethany's face and the boychild in the center of the room, between Bethany's face and Isabela idly testing the edge of her dagger, between Bethany's face and the other female mage in the room. "I know you love Merrill and I know she couldn't hurt a fly, but—"

"But demons," Bethany says, patting his arm gently. The templar armour shines even here in the filthy depths of the alienage. Alistair always stands out, especially when he doesn't want to. But it's right that he's wearing it, because if this goes badly… Well, templars are good for something, she's always known that. "I know. It'll be alright."

"Keep safe, love," he says, exhaling a great breath of air.

"I'm not going anywhere, you know," Bethany tilts her head at him. "My body isn't, anyway. And you know why we're here. Who else is going to stop an abomination loose in the alienage?"

"I know. But—"

"But _demons_ ," Bethany says again.

"But demons," Alistair agrees, and he swallows hard, worry the colour of honey wine so real in his eyes. He can't protect her from this. It eats at him, Bethany can tell. She would reach up to touch his face if she didn't think Isabela would tease.

Maybe it shouldn't matter.

Bethany opens her mouth—

"Are you coming? We can't wait anymore, we don't have time," Bethany's sister's voice snaps through the room, cut through with a somberness that's unlike her. She looks at the Alistair and Bethany with electric blue eyes, and this is love as much as she is capable. Marian doesn't bother to say anything else; she just waits the way she does when she wants something of someone. It's not loud, but there's the weight of expectation, heavy on her shoulders.

"Now?" Bethany asks.

"Yes, Bethy," Marian says. "Now."

The moment hangs unbroken. Alistair stands behind her, Marian stands in front, and Maker, as if Bethany could ever _really_ tell her sister _no_. Her husband's hands fall away as she steps forwards, and forwards, and forwards—

—and _falls_ into the Fadewalk like it's nothing.

( _Andraste,_ she thinks, _forgive me_.)

It's different than Bethany expected.

Fadewalking, that is.

Not as painful as she thought it would be, for starters.

Mages visit the Fade in their dreams, and Bethany knows her little corner of that ever-after as well as anyone can know a place that never stays the same for long. Her dreams of the place are often smeary and indistinct, and only very rarely do things have a solid shape. She's never spoken to anyone there, but then, she's no Dreamer, and she's never been inclined to summonings. Neither spirits nor demons have much use for a mage who has no use for them, especially when that mage is prone to forcing herself into wakefulness at the first whisper of those two-toned-two-twined voices.

But walking the Fade in dreams is natural.

Being forcefully pitched past the Veil is not.

The Gallows are bleached out white and over-exposed like Bethany's never seen them. But they're empty, empty, empty; there's no single person alive, no templars, no other mages, no nothing, and it occurs to her that things are just a little bit off-kilter. Everything's _flipped_ somehow, doesn't quite match up with how she remembers this cursed place from her one and only trip into the innards of Kirkwall's Circle. Ser Thrask's old office is nowhere to be found, and those scorch marks can't be right, either. There's a crawling sense of _wrong_ that creeps up her spine, a horrible hissing _bubbling_ noise, all dessicated beetle eyes in dark little shining piles like ashes. Oh, Andraste, ashes to ashes, dust to Maker-forsaken _dust_ —

And then, of course, Bethany realizes that this is only what Feynriel expects the Gallows to be.

Shimmering in the distance is a swaying ragged shadow-cloak, somehow both warm and safe enough to invite sleep but also a blaring threat. It makes Bethany's teeth ache. Sloth.

"So," Marian says, voice an echoing oilslick glimmer over water. She cracks her neck like snapping steel, and Bethany watches as Isabela's daggers come out, as Merrill's knuckles tighten on the grip of her staff. They'd follow her sister off the end of the world if she asked, because that's just what Marian Hawke inspires in people. Blind loyalty. Chest-strickening love. A dark thing, to eat up the world. "Shall we?"

—

"He's going to _Tevinter_."

"Better there than here," Bethany says, slumping against Alistair's shoulder. Feynriel's still shaking off the demons in his head, but his eyes are clear. The decision to leave is his own, and it's one that had to be made.

"You think?"

"If I could do what he can, it's where I would go," she says honestly, because it's the truth. The boy's magic is only going to grow, and if he doesn't get a hold of it, it will eat him alive. Bethany knows that better than anyone.

Alistair presses his mouth to the top of her head in lieu of an answer.

"Thank you for letting me do that," Bethany murmurs, after a long moment. Her sister is shifting, coming back to the physical world slowly, but Merrill's eyes are wide, wide open, and Isabela is already up and out the door. There are so many ugly things that need to be said between them. "Mari needed me."

"She always needs you," Alistair tells her, tucking a curl behind her ear. "Maker, Beth, I nearly pulled you out of there so many times… You kept shaking, it wouldn't stop."

"Why didn't you?"

"Keeper Marethari hit me with her staff every time I tried," he says. He's actually pouting about it, as though it had never occurred to him that if he'd really wanted to pull them from the Fade, he could have done it. The Keeper is a mage, too.

Bethany smiles, absently wondering what she'd ever done to deserve him. As though he's not hers entire, as though every part of him doesn't belong to her, as though every part of her doesn't belong to him. Fadewalking is exhausting. She lets Alistair take her weight, because she knows he's happy to do it.

In the background, Marian comes to with a strangled, "'Bela—!"

But Isabela's gone, and in that empty, quiet moment, everyone presents understands something very profound about Marian Hawke: when she loves, she loves beyond death.

"Well, that certainly could have gone better," Bethany's sister muses as she rolls into standing. There's chalk all over her palms and her knees, a patchwork of white and black that streaks her hair when she runs her hands through it. "Are we all in one piece? Merrill? Bethy? Are we alive?"

"I think so," Bethany says.

But Bethany hadn't been the one who'd had her guts dragged out of her in the Fade.

That was Merrill, and she doesn't say anything at all.

For what feels like a very long time, the Dalish mage just stands there with her shoulders up around her ears and shaking, pulling air in and out. Her hands flex, the vallaslin inked into the back of them shifting with every breath, and it's an unconscious thing.

Oh, _guilt_.

Because then she throws herself at Marian to bury her face in her throat, hiccupping high and wet. "Oh, Creators, Hawke, I'm _sorry_ —"

"I'm not angry, Merrill," Marian murmurs, ruffles the girl's dark hair, patting her shoulders down until she relaxes a little. Bethany watches the way her sister does it, such an aching care. The Fade takes the innocence out of a person, consumes it entire until there's nothing left but bones sucked dry, and Marian knows that better than anyone.

"You should be," Merrill whispers, head down.

"No, never," Bethany sister says, and her lips quirk up into something silly, the crinkling at the corner of her eyes so fond. "Why would I be mad? This is Kirkwall, a little betrayal between friends is par for the course—" at which point Marian breaks off in a panic because Merrill's shoulders begin to shake with pent-up tears. Really, what did she expect "—oh, Andraste's filthy knickers, please don't cry, I was _kidding_ , Merrill, it was a joke, I didn't mean it—"

If Bethany feels like she's lived this conversation before, it's because she has.

She's been where Merrill stands and Marian is always Marian, regardless. Bethany had been trying to apologize for setting her hair on fire or for freezing the tea or for any number of the things she'd managed as a child, before she'd really got a hold on her magic, and she'd been sobbing in the kitchen while her sister had invented an ungainly, tormented dance in the prodigious hope that whatever it was would be enough to make the tears stop.

Most usually it was, if only because it was so entirely ridiculous. Bethany's sister was absolutely terrible at dealing with crying women, and in the twenty-something years in between, this has not changed in the slightest.

But there's something intensely sad to the way that Marian touches the top of Merrill's head, and Bethany thinks that perhaps it's better if she doesn't watch, anymore. Instead, she turns her attention back to Alistair.

He's doing that thing he does where he watches her, a lopsided little grin pulling at his mouth. Bethany can feel a flush beginning below the neckline of her dress, threatening to crawl up her neck to her cheeks. Maker, he makes her feel like she's eighteen all over again, and it's terrible because they've just fallen out of the Fade and nearly died in the process.

And here Bethany is, _blushing_ about it.

Alistair doesn't say anything. He raises an eyebrow and jerks his head at the door, offers her an arm to hold on. It's old habit, something that he'd picked up as a child in Redcliffe from watching the nobles passing through the castle, and she knows, she _knows_ that it's something that still makes his teeth ache.

(He'd have made an awful king, truly; he doesn't have the temperament for it. Still, Bethany wonders what they would have offered him, Caress or Wyrme or Torpor, if he'd followed her into that last, wild frontier. She thinks that maybe she doesn't really want to know.)

She tucks her fingers into the crook of his elbow, regardless.

On the way out the door, she looks over her shoulder because she can't help it. But it's just Marian, haphazardly trying to put things back together.

And still not enough.

(For some reason, this hurts like a burn.)

Bethany lets Alistair lead her out of the alienage. Thank the Maker for him, she doesn't think she could make it on her own. The trek back to Hightown is one made in silence and dying sunlight, the dregs of the day finally beginning to lurch back into themselves, settling down to sleep. Time passes different in the Fade than it does in the physical world; Bethany's mental clock says that it's just past noon, but her body thinks it's time for supper and then bed, exactly as it does every other day when the sun sets.

She leans into Alistair's side, her curls looping against his pauldron. It'll never be easy to be close to him when he's wearing the templar armour, but there are times when Bethany's thankful for it—it encourages a wide berth between the pair of them and everyone else, which makes eavesdropping a little more difficult than usual—and right now is one of them. "We're never going to have a quiet life, are we?"

"Not with your sister around," Alistair says idly, but he's scanning the Lowtown crowd around them with sharp eyes. There's something restless about the way the crowd moves, a kind of seething that reminds Bethany of insects frenzied before a storm. "Maker's breath, I'll be happier when we're home."

Bethany makes a soft noise of agreement as she draws closer. She wants to be home with the twins and her mother and the estate's tall solid walls between her and the outside world. She didn't think there would ever be a day that she'd be _thankful_ for the old Amell estate, but there it is: between the blistering white stone of Hightown and Lowtown's strange bloodlust, she'll take the former any day.

But they make it home without incident, and Bethany nearly collapses in relief when she finds that the twins are safe and sound, tucked away in their beds.

(Liana learns to run before she learns to walk, and it's made for some interesting injuries. Carina only speaks when her sister can't, the eyes instead of the mouth. They're Bethany in miniature, dark curls and olive skin, but they have Alistair's eyes. In so many ways, their daughters are even more intrinsic to one another than Carver had ever been to Bethany herself, one organism instead of two. But they're not yet three years old, and there's no telling where they're going to end up. Sometimes, Bethany looks at Alistair with her heart in her throat, and she knows that he's thinking the same thing: the Fade curls around them, and it's only a matter of time before one of them learns how to reach out to hold onto it. Maker forbid that they _both_ get it; they've already got one witch in the family, and little mages are so very difficult to hide, especially in a city full of templars.)

"They've been asleep an hour," Mother says. Her voice is carefully neutral, and she looks the pair of them over, gaze sticking to Bethany's bruised knuckles, to Alistair carrying her staff. Mother doesn't say anything, but she doesn't need to. It's all there in her face; the pursed lips, the eyebrows risen up her forehead, the palpable disappointment. "They were wondering where you'd got to."

Neither Bethany nor Alistair has any answer that won't alarm her.

Because unfortunately, _gone Fadewalking to save a boy from demons_ probably won't go over very well, especially given that her was involved. Mother is sensitive about her oldest child, because it's like this: Marian is too much like Father, too liable to throw herself headfirst and laughing into the holy rage calling her name, and it shows itself never more obviously than on days like this. Marian is going to take a sword through the stomach one of these days, and then she's going to die, and _then what_?

_Then what_ , when Mother's already lost Carver to the Deep Roads and Father to Lothering? _Then what_ , when Bethany and Alistair have two little ones so alike that it's difficult to tell them apart? _Then what_ , when they're living in the City of Chains?

They can't argue with it.

(Marian _did_ drag them across an ocean on a whim. Bethany still remembers disembarking from the ship, and being sick to her stomach from the sight of those statues with their faces hidden in their hands. It had only been Alistair, wide shoulders set solid, guiding her through it. She hasn't grown up very much, because she's still just as afraid as she was, then. Maybe even more. She _has_ gotten better at not showing it, though. It's something.)

But before Bethany can try to find the words, Mother exhales a long, slow breath.

"All—all I ask is that you don't leave them orphans," she says, closing her eyes for a moment longer than a standard blink. The setting sun spills over her strangely, lighting up her silver hair, all the cricks and crags of her face limned red-gold.

And this is the moment that Bethany realizes that it's not just Keeper Marethari who's grown so very old. This is the moment that she learns that time waits for no person, that the erosion of childhood is an on-going thing, that while she's been living her life…

Her mother has changed, too.

"Never," Alistair says. He splays a gauntled palm against the small of Bethany's back, cold metal and fabric between skin and it's enough, it's _enough_ , because Mother stares at him and sees what abandonment looks like after it's grown up. Some things are clearer the further you get from them, even if they never really stop hurting.

"It's alright, Mother," Bethany smiles. She can feel the way Alistair breathes in and out, in and out. The demons of the day feel very far away. "We're alright."

And they are.

Sea salt, Fadewalk, Gallows. They're alright. Bethany and Alistair slip past Mother into the safe dark of the estate, footsteps already fading against the polished wood floor. Hands twined. Hearts quiet. They go to bed, and life goes back to normal.

Or at least as normal as it ever is in Kirkwall.

Summerday comes and goes, the longest day of the year brilliant and unending. It's a season of blending: one day becomes the next becomes the next, Bethany and Solona stirring up little breezes for the twins, clouds sailing white across the sky. Alistair spends less time in the Gallows, preferring instead to patrol the Wounded Coast with Aveline and Ser Cullen and Sebastian, sometimes, which can be awkward but at least keeps them all out of trouble. Evemeal is a toss-up between the estate and the Hanged Man, depending on the day and on whether Mother's feeling up to caring for a pair of rambunctious two-year-olds with only Bodahn and Orana for help. There are mornings where Isabela comes ambling down the stairs in nothing but one of Marian's shirts and Alistair turns a red so bright it's blinding. There are long merry evenings playing cards and trading stories across an ale-stained table, gambling naught but knickers when the coin's all gone. There are easy quiet nights curled up in bed together, with their daughters sleeping safe in the next room. Bethany tucks her head beneath Alistair's chin, and wonders how she got so lucky.

It's a golden summer, full of laughter and light and not one single beheading, which is probably a record, given the extended family's penchant for casual murder.

But the peace doesn't last.

It can't, after all.

It's mid-Solace when a letter from the Viscount comes to the house, addressed to her sister and sealed with expensive purple wax. It's not the first, and likely it won't be the last, but Bethany watches the way Marian cuts it open, lips thinning to a white line as she reads it through, and wonders just what in the Maker's name it is that Marlowe Dumar wants from her family today.

"Shit," Marian hisses the word, rakes her hair out of her face, and that tells Bethany everything she needs to know. Her sister, off to save the world again. "I've got to talk to Varric. Take Mother shopping, will you? I don't know when I'll be back."

As though anyone knows when Marian will be back.

She's dressed and out the door before Bethany can get a word in edgewise, which is exactly like her. Sunlight pours in through the windows, catching on motes of dust and shining, a perfect moment of simple beauty left in the wake of a hurricane. It makes Bethany think of those dry-baked days in Lothering before everything, when Alistair helped her carry the groceries home and everyone she'd ever known had thought about spring weddings. They're a long ways from that, now, but Marian's just as frenetic as she ever was.

Bethany's sister comes and she goes as she pleases, and leaves everyone else to pick up after her.

Still, what else is there?

And it _is_ market day.

It's not hard to get Mother out of the house. She goes easy into Lowtown's bustle, that seething throng of people all going about their business. It's early enough that Bethany's favourite baker still has the sticky-sweet cinnamon cakes she loves so much left, and she and Mother follow the still-warm scent of them all the way to the stall. The sun shines watery through patchy cloud-cover, a kind of thin thready light that settles lightly on the shoulders, and they fill up on melted sugar and doughy buns before wandering down the side-streets to the growers, herbs and leafy greens and poisons all. From there it's the butcher's and then the chandlery, for fresh cuts of meat and fresher candles, and back up to Lirene's for the imported Redcliffe cheese that Alistair likes so much.

Bethany counts the leftover silver after she's tucked the cheese away, and thinks that they've done not half bad. There's more than enough for a donation for the refugees; five years and things haven't gotten any better, no matter how few darkspawn there are left on the surface. It's not been easy, not at all, but the lines around Lirene's eyes have smoothed a little since Bethany last saw her. They've all got secrets.

The _clink_ of metal hitting solid-bottomed charity box is the jingle that follows Bethany back out into the day. Mother is off a ways, talking to a man with flowers in his arms. It's good to see her talking to people; for a long time, Bethany had wondered if her mother was ever going to get over her father's death. But slowly, slowly she's coming out of it. The twins help.

Mother laughs and Bethany heads towards her—

And everything goes black.

—

She comes to like drowning, flicking in and out of consciousness for a long time before finally breaching the surface of it and holding on.

Bethany finds herself in a large ink-dark space that roils with the revoltingly delicate perfume of heat and smelted metal and human excrement. The world resolves itself slowly, shadow-shapes coming into focus in waves. The hot mortal glow of fire is a distant thing. _Below the foundries_ , something in the back of her mind supplies, an old instinct from a time when she'd lived close by, the knowledge that the foundries were dangerous places best left alone.

At least the ground is solid. Bethany curls her fists against it, raises her head just an inch.

There is a man-shaped shadow sitting in a chair, staring upwards at a painting of a woman. There's too little light to make his features out—it's all focused on the painting, lit up like the Viscount's fortress at night—and so Bethany can't get a very good look at him. But she can hear him, clear across the empty open space.

He's _humming_.

Up and down, it's a nasal sort of sound that echoes weirdly off the steam-slick foundry walls. It's not a tune Bethany knows, but it instills a haunted primal melancholy in her, hunger and longing and the faintest trickle of fear.

No one hums like that unless they've lost everyone they've ever loved.

And the portrait he's staring at, it's Mother, or very nearly Mother. The same face, the same sharp cheekbones, the same feathery hair but for the colour. The same eyes, too, the same straight nose. The portrait's smile is a little softer, perhaps a little sadder. There's none of Mother's wicked sense of humour in the creases, none of the way she folds her hands and manages to quell everyone in the vicinity just by widening her eyes and breathing in with devastating effect.

Everything else is the same.

Bethany thinks, rather suddenly, that she's going to be sick.

Because the portrait has reminded her that she'd not been alone when the darkness took her, that Mother had been there, too. She raises her head another inch, quiet as she can, cranes her neck just enough that it doesn't crack when she looks to the left to find her mother—

Oh, Andraste, _Mother_.

There's no blood, but Mother lies supernaturally still, shoulder at an odd angle on a strange little cot. Bethany listens for a long minute, the creeping paralysis of horror stealing over her until Mother takes a single, shallow breath.

The nausea passes, and Bethany is hollow with relief.

The scrape of a chair against stone startles her. The humming man doesn't even glance their way as he stands, sends one more long look up at the painting. He leaves behind a whirlwind of paper and books, something distinctly rotted following him as he goes. Bethany hadn't even known it was there it until it's gone, but she finds that the air clears enough to breathe it without wanting to retch.

Though it may just be that she's getting used to it.

Because it's not just Mother and Bethany in this crevice. There's another cot with another body on it, a woman younger than Mother but rather more dead. In the space between seconds where Mother's chest doesn't move, Bethany wonders if maybe they'd both be better off if they were.

At least then it wouldn't hurt like this.

But no. That would only give the humming man the satisfaction of winning, his darker purpose still hidden somewhere in the depths of the foundry's innards. Bethany can feel it in her soul, the way whatever magic's he's used to keep them here seeks to pull her back beneath its evil thrall.

Blood magic is the only thing that can keep a person bound like this.

But thank the Maker, Mother's alive, and Bethany's free.

Though if the humming man has his way, Bethany doesn't think either of them will be for long. The woman's body is missing the feet, and her dead eyes stare out of their sockets, such a terrified face. Bethany would reach out to give the body some peace, but she can still hear him, the weird wet resonance of his humming bouncing off the walls. She doesn't move that far for fear of alerting him to her freedom. If it _is_ blood magic, maybe he just used enough to hold a normal person. And why wouldn't he? There's no indication that Bethany is anything but the daughter of a noblewoman, the mother to two noble girls, the wife to a templar, even.

And here, then, is the humming man's crucial mistake.

Because Bethany's own connection to the Fade flares strong, seething with the fear choking up her throat. One mage to another, she's strong and she's well-trained. Death doesn't scare her the way the templars do, and neither does oblivion. The cool clear pool of her magic remains untainted.

And to die down here in the dark, without seeing Carver or Alistair or her daughters ever again…

_No_ , Bethany thinks, sudden and fierce and furious. _No, not tonight_.

Force magic comes naturally to Bethany. It always has; the push and pull of it springs eternal, blue-gold in her mind's eye like sunshine off of water. It's that image that helps her to her knees: morning on the Wounded Coast, walking with Alistair and laughing at the sheer relief of it, twined hand in hand.

She's not ready to die yet.

Building the barrier is the work of a second, though it is harder than it should be, given that she doesn't have her staff. Bethany can't build it as large as she'd like, but she's close enough to Mother that it doesn't matter, and there's no one else around to protect; the dead woman would probably prefer that they kept themselves safe, because it is a thing universal to women, the urge to protect other women alone in the dark. With an unspoken apology on her tongue, Bethany builds a fortress around the pair of them made of that same blue-gold, pouring the whole of herself into it. Brick by painful brick the barrier comes into existence, coalescing into a dome of glittering, glowing white.

Power made solid to cut off the rest of the world.

The humming man can't touch them now. Nothing penetrates the barrier, not even sound, and so Bethany has no idea whether he's caught her out yet. He's gone, after all. So maybe not, and if that's the case, she's got a few minutes to think.

The fifth school, forbidden since the fall of the Imperium. Blood magic.

_Maker_.

Bethany knew that it had been getting bad. Alistair's grown more and more quiet about the inner working guts of the Gallows as the months have gone by, but she knows it's been ugly by the way the shadows have slowly moved to take over his whole face. And the number of Tranquil has doubled since they stumbled past the templars in the Gallows all that time ago, she knows that. But this kind of blood magic, it's—

It's something else, entire.

Something poisoned has sunk its claws into Kirkwall. It's in the air, the half-gold of a crimson sun setting on a day when a murderer gets away clean. It's in the shine of light off a power-mad templar's teeth, mana-drain cuffs locked and low on wrists chafed bloody raw. It's in the too-slow beat of Mother's heart.

Down here Bethany can feel it slick across her skin, trying to find a crack to slip inside her, too.

Blood magic.

(It's an infection. Bethany thinks of Merrill, her innocence and her greenery smeared red and the way she clutches at her staff when someone's being horrible about something she loves. They're friends now, though they weren't at first; understanding is a thing that took a very long time between them. Merrill's blood magic is not like the blood magic that Bethany knows is seething just outside of the dome of her barrier, but it could become like it. It could.)

She becomes aware in increments that there's something wailing against the shifting cloud-veils of the barrier. Whatever it is is red and vile, sick the entire way through.

_Oh_ , she thinks, _there you are_.

The humming man is half-obscured, but what she can see of him burns itself into her mind. It's something she'll never forget: he's a mild-featured man, somehow so bland as to be entirely forgettable, all indistinctly-pale skin and thinning mouse-brown hair and shaking hands. But his eyes are the howling blood-shot-sleepless eyes of a fanatic driven mad with desperation.

The humming man's mouth wide around broken teeth, Bethany thinks that he's screaming.

And the sound of sick magic pounding against Bethany's barrier isn't so much a sound as it is a feeling: _thud-thud, thud-thud, th-thud, th-thud, th-thud_. Like a heartbeat. The humming man is so fervent with it that even through the magic, his mind splays out in the Fade unguarded. He wants her fortress gone, he wants her fortress dead; he wants Bethany's mother's head like he's never wanted anything in his life. He wants the blood, wants the flesh, the embalming techniques have finally worked, the skin is right at last. He wants something long lost, and he is _so close_ to having her again—

Bethany can feel his fury in every strike. After everything, to be foiled now may kill him.

_No_ , Bethany thinks. Viciously. Violently. _No, you will not kill anyone else_.

She turns her palms out. Father taught her that a staff is just a focus point, something to concentrate on to keep from getting distracted while the magic does its work. Bethany thinks of him now, hair dark as her own underneath Lothering's sun, hands steady as he spun ice and wind into handheld storms with only the tips of his fingers.

It's an easy thing to drape it over herself, that memory of family and safety a perfect mantle to still the fear that threatens just beneath her sternum. Her father taught her how to survive her magic, how to thrive despite it, how to hold it tight between her teeth like the weapon that it is.

Andraste knows that Bethany is going to teach her daughters the same.

She reaches for her magic.

_Hello again_ , she says as it rises to meet her, sparkling brilliant white edged in blue-green. Some things never change and this is one of them—Bethany's magic is as grown up now as she is, but it is still the wildest part of her. In thick glowing ropes that wind around her wrists to pull her down, she catches flashes of her own wants: Alistair in the sunshine, honey-wine eyes and crooked grin, so kind that it makes all of her teeth ache. Alistair in the firelight, cards in his hands, smiling at her alone across a smoky room. Alistair in bed, soft and sleep-mussed and hers, entirely, completely, irrevocably _hers_.

Bethany's magic had claimed Alistair long before Bethany herself ever did.

And that wild base part of her will never allow anyone to take her away from him. Not the templars, not her twin, and _certainly_ not some man humming a blood mage's mad song. Bethany is Marian's sister, and it is here beneath the surface of the world with the woman who birthed them both barely breathing on the ground that Bethany realizes just how much they are alike.

Proprietary devotion seems to run in the family.

Magic pours out of Bethany's open palms, a flood of power to slam into foundations gone shaky from the humming man's assault. Her castle, her fortress, her Maker-forsaken _barrier_ ; he has nothing here, because magic is completely about belief, and if there's one thing Bethany believes, it's that Marian will come to find her. Desolate or dead or dying, there is nowhere in Thedas that her sister won't be able to find her.

Blood magic, forbidden or not, has no sway over Marian Hawke.

And Bethany will keep their mother safe until then.

She sinks under the ocean inside of her, allows the magic free reign. It is a symphony the colour of the Waking Sea, sunglow diamonds across her skin in slow motion. Bethany will never know how long she holds the magic in place; it might be a minute, or an hour, or several sunless days. They stand on the opposite sides of a vast gaping chasm, do Bethany and the humming man, a careful dance back and forth between _not enough_ and _too much_. She pours her magic out and pours out and pours, emptying herself until there is nothing left.

But even so, the barrier is a passive thing. It is not a heavy thing to carry.

And blood magic always does require sacrifice.

Time passes.

The humming man tires, eventually, blood drained of energy turning the foundry mud into a rusted carmine abattoir. There is a tremble to Bethany's shoulders because she is tired, too, but at the very least she's not bleeding nor standing on a killing floor. Mother's eyes flicker beneath her closed eyelids, but they are both still alive, still alive. Thank the Maker, still alive.

Bethany pushes sweat-soaked curls out of her eyes.

It's just a second, but it's just a second too long.

The humming man's pale eyes bulge out of his head, red entire, now, his hand stretching out to clench into a fist to grasp a hold of the momentary weakness. One foot in the Fade and one out, they hurl themselves into the abyss, clutching and clawing. Only her mother's life is at stake, only her own, only everything she has ever cared about. Bethany flinches back—

And a pair of daggers bury themselves into the ground where the humming man had stood not a minute before.

Marian.

(Only her sister would be so needlessly dramatic.)

It's a blur of movement, the sudden rise of demons as the people who love Bethany most in the world come snarling out of the gloom. Shades with their single glowing orb-eye, their hulking shoulders, their deadly claws; rage demons, their burning trails and their hot mortal fury; desire demons, curling horns and pointed teeth behind perfect lips, perfect lips, ice in the fingertips. Bethany holds her barrier and watches as her sister tears through them all with dead-faced efficiency.

There's nothing in Marian's expression but a murder in the night.

The humming man must see it, too, because he flees deeper into the forges. A hiss of steam, and Marian follows him with her daggers out, because this ends tonight. The gloom swallows them both and things seem to go perfectly still for a single second.

With sweat dripping down her spine and shaking shoulders, it again occurs to Bethany that the world waits for her sister, but no one else.

"Just a little longer, Mother, we're going to be alright," Bethany manages to whisper, though she knows her mother can't hear her. The shades throw themselves at her sister's friends, and it's the brilliant blue-white of Anders-and-Justice, green growing vines snapping from Merrill's fingers, the _thud_ of crossbow bolts into decaying flesh. It's the space carved out by a greatsword, the gleam of light off a dagger blade, the odd deadening of the senses at the barest press of a Cleanse and then a Silence—

Oh, _Alistair_.

He plants himself firmly between Bethany's barrier and the horde of demons seething around them, shield angled down to keep the glancing blows from swinging up and getting him in the face, acid and spit and fire.

She doesn't know how long they fight. There are shades and then there are burning rage demons and then there's the creeping frost from a desire demon's lilac claws. Bethany holds her barrier and holds her barrier and _holds_ , though it chafes at something fundamental not to stretch it around Alistair, too. It wouldn't help and she knows that, she _knows_ that, but first and last and always, they belong to one another. Trying to break that habit is like putting her heart between her teeth.

When the dust settles, there is broken and there is bleeding, but no one's dead.

As always, it's in the aftermath that the catch-up happens: Bethany wobbles, the first cracklings of mana depletion beginning to set in because it's safe, now, or at least as safe as Kirkwall's depths ever get. It's Alistair's gauntleted palm against her barrier, gentle enough to kill. It's Varric's face wan in the half-light. It's almost everyone Bethany loves, just waiting—

And then it's Marian, blood smeared on her face and wild-eyed panicky, hurrying out of the dark.

"He's dead," Bethany's sister announces, raking ripped nails through her hair, sheathing her knives, trying to shake out the excess energy. She's too much, is Marian, always, iced eyes and iced smile and iced soul. The statement echoes weirdly off the stinking foundry walls. "He's dead, I killed him, Maker help us all if my mother isn't alright. Bethy, darling, drop that stupid thing and let us in, Anders, I need you, where are you—"

Several things happen all at once.

The barrier melts away in a flash of light, sunshine through morning mist. Alistair, reaching. Marian, that awful nothing in her face, dragging Anders into the leftover ash. She doesn't say anything because she doesn't need to, it's all there in ugly line of her mouth: _here, now, please. Save her. I don't care what you have to do_.

Anders and Bethany look at each other, healer to healer. Bethany doesn't say that she can't, even though she can't. She's tired, now, tired and helpless and nearly laughing with it the way that she gets with over-exhaustion. Anders reminds her of her father, so much sometimes that it aches. He's got that same old, fond quirk to his mouth.

Magic spills out of him, blue-white and shining, stained powerful with lyrium.

(For one crystallized second, everything is perfectly silent.)

But then Marian is fussing at Mother over Anders' healing hands, every one of her sharp edges turned prickly with worry. It leaves Alistair to catch Bethany up and keep her standing, and that's precisely what he does. His arms go around her and for once she doesn't mind that he's wearing templar armour and covered in blood. She's so tired and she's so painfully relieved to touch him that she can't even put the words together.

"Hi," she says into his throat. Bethany can feel herself hovering on that tipping edge into exhausted hysteria, high-pitched giggling trapped horrible in her chest. "You're here, it's you, I'm so glad it's you—"

"Oh, Maker," Alistair says into her hair. He's shaking, gulping air down, shoulders twisted all wrong like he might fall apart. "You're—are you— _shit_ , what if you were—"

"Mm, what?"

"I couldn't—you were gone, I couldn't, the twins were—I couldn't _find_ you, Beth," Alistair mumbles through it, but there's something urgent about the way his hands skitter over her like he can't touch her enough. She's about to catch hold of his wrists and cling, to stare up into his face and try to find her fingertips over the creases at the corners of his eyes, but Alistair suddenly goes still as stone. The breath goes out of him all in a rush.

"Are you alright?" he asks, like he doesn't know what else to say.

"Tired, not hurt," she says, pulling the energy out of the hysterics jumbled inside to piece together a wobbly smile. It's not wholly the way right, but something is better than nothing. She's alright now, Mother's alright now, they're all alright now. That's the only thing that matters.

The skin around Alistair's eyes tightens with the clench of his jaw, so maybe not. But he keeps his arms around her, a shield of silverite, and that's good, because Bethany thinks that if he lets go of her now, they both might die. They both might shatter into nothing, fragmented down to the gritty shining dust that makes a person up, swirling blue magic, honey-gold heavy armour.

"I'm safe, Alistair," she says, maybe to reassure him, maybe to reassure herself.

"I don't know what I'd do with myself if you weren't," Alistair says, and he's still, he's still, he's so _still_ , but Bethany can hear the shaking truth buried somewhere deep in the statement. He _wouldn't_ know what to do with himself if she died, he wouldn't even know where to begin. They're going to need to talk about it, but they're going to have to talk about a lot of things about tonight.

She doesn't tell him that he'd be fine, even though he would be fine.

Maker knows, he doesn't need to hear that right now.

Bethany catches Marian's pale gaze across the bloody floor, across the muck and the mire. The two sisters look at each other for a long time in the healing witchlight. It's a fierce thing, the weight of protecting a family; Marian always took pains to keep Bethany safe, but it's beyond that, now.

Because here is the way of the world: the old die and so do the young, and everyone in between mourns.

But it's not possible to keep someone safe forever, especially when they have people they need to keep safe, too. The twins' faces surface in Bethany's mind for a moment, small and bright-eyed and laughing, growing so fast and so alike that they're hard to keep track of. She's become her mother, hasn't she, always vigilant, always with her children hidden in the sway of her skirt, always with one foot already out the door.

And Alistair, with his sword and his crooked grin and the easy way he breathes…

Andraste, Bethany wouldn't survive, without Alistair.

(She'd be fine without Alistair, but she wouldn't survive. Alistair would be fine without her, too, but he also wouldn't survive. They'd be fine because they'd have to be fine. They'd be fine because their daughters depend on them to be fine, and that trumps even the law, even the Chantry, even the Maker. It's why Mother was fine after Father died, even though she'd buried so much of herself with him in Lothering. It's not healthy, probably, but what _is_?)

Marian looks at her for another long moment. Something like pity spills over her face, soft and sad and horrible. She smiles, too, which only makes it worse.

And Bethany looks away.

"Take me home, please. I'm—I want to go home," Bethany whispers into Alistair's throat, so quiet it could almost be a secret. She doesn't think she's ever going to let go, and she won't look at her sister again. It's a hurting thing. It's a healing thing, too.

"I know," Alistair says. He presses his mouth to the top of her head again, warm and alive, and the foundries don't seem so entirely dark. Or maybe it's just that things don't hurt so much; Bethany thinks of the dead woman with her open eyes, staring vacantly out into the night. Kirkwall eats the best and the worst, sick greedy-guts city that it is. "I want to go home, too."

And her sister stands in the center of it, blood on her hands and blood on her daggers and blood on her face, all waving goodbye.

Bethany shudders, curling closer to Alistair's chest.

It's nothing, nothing, nothing.

—

Alistair herds Bethany into their room once they get home with a single-minded intensity that would be a little bit overwhelming if not for the fact that Bethany's in much the same state. The sun's not quite up and so neither are the twins, and it's easy to let Marian hustle Mother to Solona and then away into the leavening grey of a healing room.

Bethany is too tired to see straight.

"Bedtime, love," Alistair murmurs. There's a sigh of dusky candlelight in his voice, nighttime's creeping warmth slipping in between her ribs and dragging her muzzily down.

"I had to protect Mother," Bethany says. It's the only coherent thought she's got. Bedtime, yes, sleep, yes, but Mother—she needed to keep Mother safe. Marian never would have forgiven her, otherwise. _Bethany_ wouldn't have been able to forgive herself, either.

"I know," Alistair says. Sighs. The _clink_ of chainmail coiling on the floor is the only sound. Bethany sways into it, the familiar cadence of her husband coming back to himself a comforting thing. Helmet, gauntlets, greaves, chest plate, in that order, always. It's a nice sound. A good sound.

"Come on, you, too. You can't sleep like that, Beth," he says, and he doesn't really have to tell her that there's bloody mud all over her dress. Given where they've been, it would be half a miracle if she _wasn't_ covered in mud and blood and other worse things.

"I—I don't know if I can," Bethany says. She's not sure if she means _get undressed_ or _sleep_ or what, but it's all the same. She's not sure if she can. There's still hysteria clenched tight behind her heart like fear, and it's all she can do to hold it in place and not let it have its way, entire.

A helpless little quirk picks up the corner of Alistair's mouth, so painfully fond, and he reaches across the space between them to tuck his fingers beneath the neckline of her dress at the shoulder. He tugs at it, gentle as anything. "Do you want me to—?"

"If you don't mind," Bethany whispers, ducks her head just a little because it's hard, sometimes, to admit that she needs him so much.

At the very least, it's the same for him.

Alistair deconstructs her from the outside in, layers of clothing stripped away until she's down to her smalls, left shivering in the grey light in through the window. There's a vulnerability to it, like this: her curls down her bare back, bones turned to dust, just waiting for his hands against her skin.

"I nearly lost you," he says, soft and almost wonderingly, and Bethany remembers the first time he'd ever said that, waking up to Lothering's weak sunlight and a bleakness she'd never encountered before across his face. There have been times in between, too, but that was the first. It's there now, again, but tinged with something so desperate that she doesn't have a name for it. More to lose, maybe.

"I'm sorry," she says.

"No, you're not," Alistair says.

It's just a statement of fact. Bethany doesn't bother to deny it, not when it's true. She shivers again, wonders if maybe he's angry about it. He could be. Might be, even. And it's not like she'd blame him for it, but there hadn't been much of a choice. Where else could she have done? It's Lothering and that sick little boy all over again—and barriers, at least, don't tire her out the way healing does. Barriers, at least, are something she's good at, something that her magic latches to and _holds_ , doesn't have to fight with to get a grip on it. Barriers, at least, Bethany can do.

"I guess so," she murmurs, and this, finally, is when Alistair touches her.

"C'mere," he says, and then after a moment of startled clarity, goes, "Maker's breath, you're freezing!"

"You _did_ take my clothes off," Bethany says, a quiet little slip of a laugh in the words. Heat radiates off him and she sinks into it, lets it wash over her like the tide. He's always like that, warm all the way through, warm as sunshine, warm as tea. It leaks into everything he is, the colour of his skin and his hair and his eyes, all turned gold.

"Didn't mean to turn you into an icicle," he says, grinning, and then he's got his arms around her to tuck her into his chest, bare skin against bare skin. "You do that well enough yourself."

" _Magic_ , Ser Templar," Bethany smiles into his throat. Her own aforementioned power tugs at the backs of her eyes, sings _sleep_ and _want_ and _mine_ as it always does.

"Magic," Alistair echoes, shaking his head.

There's something strange about that, about the way he says it, but Bethany's too tired to parse it apart and it's not like either of them are going anywhere any time soon. Maybe in the morning when the sun's up and she doesn't feel like her bones aren't heavy enough to keep her attached to the earth. "Bedtime now, please?"

Alistair hikes her up, hands splayed wide against her thighs. "Am I to carry you?"

"I would like that," Bethany murmurs. The words feel too big for her mouth. "Don't leave."

Alistair makes a disbelieving sound, something that would almost be hysteric if it weren't so quiet. Bethany lets him deposit her on the bed, too muzzy to register that he's pulling up the covers and fluffing the pillows, aware only that he's not pressed against her side the way he should be.

But he settles, finally, and Bethany curls into him.

Closes her eyes.

"Beth…" Alistair says her name into the downy grey pre-dawn. Just her name, so soft.

"Mmnm?"

"I'm glad you're alright."

Bethany can hardly keep her eyes open, but there's a little catch to it that has her pushing herself up on her elbow to look at him. He's staring at the ceiling, eyes wide open. From this angle, she can see the way the night's left its mark on him: there are Gallows-shadows and then there's this, loss-shadows, fear-shadows. Demon-shadows, those early beginnings of a life sucked away from itself.

The last dregs of her magic come to her, sparkling white, to brush them away.

"Me, too," she says. "It wasn't—I would rather _not_ do tonight over again, it wasn't a fantastic experience."

"I was terrified," he laughs, a little hoarse, lips catching against her knuckles. His pupils swallow up his whole face, eyes like holes in the world. "Couldn't feel you anywhere, love, you were just _gone_ , I—I thought—"

"Oh, Alistair," Bethany says, throat sticking tight. She drops her head so they're nose to nose, close enough to breathe the same air. He closes around her like a drowning man, past the edge of comfort and into something nearing pain, but all she does is shift more of her weight onto him. Alistair needs something to anchor him down, and she can be that, right now. "You didn't think…"

"I did."

No wonder he'd been shaking.

(Bethany forgets, sometimes, that Alistair had been very alone for a very long time. She forgets that he'd had to keep his name secret—keeps it secret even _now_ , because Maker knows what would happen if the entire world found out that the technical heir to the Ferelden throne has spent the last half-decade living in Kirkwall, married to a mage—that sometimes the loneliness still eats him up alive when he's left on his own for too long. She forgets that he's still just learning how to have a family that won't disappear on him, even though her mother's all but adopted him, even though her sister would take a sword through the gut before she'd let anything happen to him. Bethany forgets this, sometimes.)

He never does well, when he thinks she's dead.

"I'm here," Beth says. The thought of sleep fades away into the distance to be dealt with later. There are more important things, right now, and exhaustion is such a far-away second. "We're here, it's alright, I'm not going anywhere."

"I know," he says, breathes, but he _can't_ know. He can't know because his pulse is too fast and he's holding on too tight and he can't look her in the eye, as though she might vanish into thin air if he doesn't keep a hold on her. Bethany sits up and crawls into his lap so that she's full atop him, the sleep shaking out of her limbs as she moves.

"Alistair," Bethany says. "Look at me."

He looks at her, and the trust in it nearly undoes her.

Beth runs her hands through his hair, a wry little smile curling up the corners of her mouth. It's funny, because if it had been the other way around, if he'd been the one hit over the head and dragged down into the dark, Bethany can't imagine that she'd ever let him out of her sight again. Alistair leans into the touch, though she thinks he probably doesn't even know he's doing it. He's tactile in the strangest ways. "Would you feel that if I wasn't here?"

"Who knows," he mutters, even as he's leaning into it. The muscles in his shoulders relax with every pass of her hands. Bethany doesn't bother counting how many times she does it. She'd do it until she died, if it made the emptiness behind his eyes disappear.

"Who knows?"

"You don't want to know what I'd conjure up," he says quietly. Lothering flashes across his face, and Andraste, Bethany can see it clear as day: the gold-green fields and the sweetgrass in the Chantry doors, Alistair standing all by his lonesome because there was no one around who wanted to talk to him. It's such a long time ago, but it might as well be yesterday for all that they've figured themselves out since.

"I used to think I'd dreamed you," Bethany tells him, stroking her thumb over his forehead and watching the way he relaxes in increments. Maybe she's told him that before, but she thinks he could stand to hear it again, and she flops down against him to tuck her face into the crook of his neck. "Haven't I told you that before?"

"Probably," Alistair says. He turns his face in towards her, breathes. Breathes. "I love you."

"I did get that, yes," Bethany smiles into his skin. His pulse beneath her lips is still just a tick too fast, but he's begun sort of idly following the lines of her ribs with the tips of his fingers, and, well. It wouldn't be the first time. "What happened to bedtime?"

"You crawled on top on me, love. You're not wearing anything. What did you expect?"

"And who's fault is it that I'm not wearing anything?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Alistair says, but he's grinning, and then she's grinning, and then they're both laughing. And then they're both laughing, trying to swallow it down so that they don't wake the whole estate. And then they're both laughing, and it's clean and it's clear and it's fine because they're here together.

And then they're both laughing, and Bethany smothers it into Alistair's mouth because she can, because he's there, because, Maker knows, that she loves him. And then it's—

Well.

Then it's something else, isn't it.

—

When Isabela and Aveline get into a fight, they are not quiet about it.

The shouting rings through the Amell Estate, shaking it to the foundations. This is no little squabble; there's an underlying _nastiness_ to Aveline's voice, a jagged sharp edge to Isabela's, and they clash back and forth in the foyer while Mother is out. Bethany and Solona wince at each other upstairs while Neria frowns, the three of them mutually deciding all at once to hustle the twins outside.

There's a chill in the air, the last few golden-orange days of August smearing into the beginnings of Kingsway's cooler bite, but the sun's out so it's not so bad. The garden is green, still, and Liana and Carina disappear into the foliage without much prompting, already slipping into playing pretend, far away from the things that hurts. They're young, but they don't like the fighting, either.

Bethany can't blame them.

Isabela and Aveline are something else.

"Why do they do that?" Neria asks, wrinkling her face up. There's a smattering of freckles across her nose just a shade darker than the milk-pale of her skin; Solona's little shadow has been out in the sun more, this year, has finally begun to build herself an identity outside of the Circle and the Fade and not being all the way into the world. She brushes white hair out of her eyes, squints some more. "Aren't they tired?"

"You need to stop spending time with Anders, duckling, you're starting to sound like him," Solona sighs, settling down at a little wrought-iron table painted white. She tips her head back, eyes closed to soak up the sun, and for a moment the resemblance to Marian is so stark that Bethany's heart hurts. She doesn't know why, but it has something to do with sisters and twins and the barely-healed space where her brother should be. Things are still delicate, that's all.

"I don't know why you don't like him, he's _fascinating_ —"

This is how they pass the afternoon, bantering back and forth, sending off wisps of colour that get lost amid the early-autumn flora for the twins to chase after. It's too nice out to be as wary as they ought, but the neighbours are too terrified of Marian's wild band of murder-ey friends to pry too much; the echoes of Aveline and Isabela's shouting still linger, though it's been hours. Not even Mother's disapproval manages to sweep the vestiges of it away, and this is saying something, as Mother's disapproval is often enough to cow even the most stubborn bits of emotion into submission. Wherever they've gone to, the Amell Estate is again empty of howling pirates and guard captains.

Bethany puts the twins down for a nap. The hour of silence won't go amiss—there're chores to be done—but it might as well be any other day. The upkeep of an estate is far more care-intensive than a tiny hole-in-the-wall home on the Waking Sea, so there are things to do. Orana and Bodahn squabble about how best to cook a roast over Sandal working some kind of magic at his rune table, Solona tucked up with Neria in the library, Mother sewing in her room.

It's funny, what the Hawke family has become.

Alistair comes home, kisses Bethany's curls like a habit, goes to wash off the day. When the world isn't ending the way it tends to in Kirkwall, things are good.

And then, of course, Marian comes home.

(This does seem to be a theme in Bethany's life.)

There's ash in Marian's hair and blood speckled on her hands, a rising wave reeking of salt and smelted metal. Merrill trails behind her, but Aveline's at Bethany's sister's side, lips pressed white into a hard line. Smoke clings to their shoulders, shadow-capes, slowly leaching away.

And Bethany knows, all of a sudden deep in her bones, that something terrible has happened.

"Mari?" she asks. The dishtowel in her hands ices over involuntarily. "What's going on? Where's Isabela?"

"Bela's gone," Marian exhales. She closes her eyes for a second longer than a standard blink, but it's enough; Bethany can see the damage in her sister, the hollowing-out, the _loss_. Aveline's mouth tightens, and there's guilt there, but Maker, Isabela might be the first person not family that Marian's ever really loved.

"Marian…"

"It doesn't matter," her sister says, eyes snapping open. There's something glinting cold there, sharp and deadly like a dagger made of ice made to slip between the fourth and fifth ribs and then melt away, but it's gone before Bethany can put a name to it. Marian rakes her nails through her hair, blows all the air in her lungs out through her teeth. "Excellent, let's just keep this up. If we're lucky, we _won't_ set off a war!"

"What," someone says flatly. It might be Alistair. It might also not be Alistair.

"Oh, nothing, dearest. Incidentally, if the Qunari down the way start murdering and pillaging, would you mind taking the family down through the tunnels to Lowtown? It'll keep you out of sight—"

" _What_ ," and this time it very definitely is Alistair. His hand closes around Bethany's, warm and callused, and something relaxes infinitesimally in her chest. Thank the Maker for him, she has no idea how she'd handle this if he wasn't here.

"Qunari, murder, into the tunnels," Marian says, very cheerfully for all that it's forced shiny, a white flash in a dark face. "Chop chop, we _have_ done this before, there were darkspawn involved. You remember, no?"

(As though either of them could forget. Lothering looms closer than it has in a very long time.)

Honestly, Bethany doesn't even want to ask what her sister's put into motion. There was a reason they'd never had the tunnel to the vault filled, and it's precisely because something like this was always a possibility. A nightmare-escape for when the templars would eventually come, because they always do—Bethany hadn't thought the first time they'd be sneaking out would be to avoid a horde of rampaging Qunari.

There's a first time for everything in Kirkwall, apparently.

"We don't have time for this, Hawke," Aveline says, voice low, and she's been so quiet this whole time, flame-hair braided away from her face, that Bethany had almost forgotten her. For someone in heavy armour, Kirkwall's guard captain is ominously silent. "The Arishok won't wait."

"How inconsiderate of us," Marian murmurs, mercurial little smirk in place. It splits a little further when she catches Bethany looking; they are sisters, after all, and in the dark burning place in Bethany's chest where she's no tears left to cry, sisters are a thing that lingers. "Shall we, then?"

"Hawke—"

" _Aveline_ ," Marian says, and it's enough.

"I'll wait outside," Aveline says, exhaling heavily through her nose. Her armour _clanks_ when she takes a step towards the door, and it's a deliberate thing when she looks over her shoulder. There's an old death in her face, and Andraste knows, they've all lost enough. "Two minutes, Hawke, no more."

"Shoo, you, or I'll start to think you'll let me do filthy things to your guardswomen while they're on watch—" at which point Aveline slams the door behind her, which was likely Marian's aim in the first place. She's not subtle, Bethany's sister, but she watches the door with a bitterly fond twist to her lips. Marian loves so easy, and so very, very hard.

"Mari," Bethany says, quietly, trying to bring her softly back. "What's going _on_?"

"Nothing good, darling," Marian says.

This is the most unnerving thing Bethany has heard in her entire life.

She sits on it for a while with her arms wrapped around herself, Alistair at her side, as Marian darts around the estate gathering up a glittering pile of steel and studded leathers. She drags Solona and Neria out of the library, too, the pair of them blinking owlishly against the light like they'd been asleep. They might have been—it wouldn't be the first time, the library's safely comfortable—and Bethany's stopped wondering about that relationship. It's close and important, and that's enough.

"—could always use another healer."

"Is Anders going with you?"

"Come and find out, Nerry, he'll be pleased to see you," Marian laughs, but there's an edge to her voice that just seems _off_. It's Isabela, but of course it's Isabela, the faded blue of a handkerchief tucked nearly invisible up Marian's sleeve. Holes and tears. "And if you come, then—"

"Then Sonny comes, too!" Neria says brightly. "And less people die?"

"Yes, that is how that's supposed to work—"

This is how Bethany's sister gets what she wants; she talks Neria into talking Solona into agreeing to go talk to the Arishok, on the basis that fewer people would die with an extra Spirit Healer on hand. It's not untrue, but there are better ways to put a Spirit Healer to use than to throw her into the middle of a warzone full of templars. The fact of the matter is that Marian is determined to force the world into the way she wishes it, and there's no one who can stop her. That Solona is terrified of the templars is of no consequence, that she still hasn't spoken to Ser Cullen is of no consequence, that she would never leave the estate if she didn't absolutely have to is of no consequence.

Marian Hawke doesn't think about thinks like _consequence_.

And here and now, the practicalities of healing outweigh any single person's fear. They move along in eddies, Nerry gently shoving Solona up and out, back into their bedroom for their staves, then outside to find Aveline, chattering all the while. It would be contrived if it weren't so honest, and if the howling loss that Marian is keeping so carefully leashed wasn't so painful.

(Oh, _grief_.)

Silence falls like a blanket.

"Alistair, keep my sister out of trouble," Marian says, into the sudden stillness. "Keep my mother alive, keep my nieces safe. I'm trusting you, templar. Don't muck it up."

That's all she says, and then she's gone out the door, into the burning night.

After Marian disappears, dragging half the family and all their friends with her, Bethany turns to look at Alistair. He's got that expression on his face like someone's hit him over the head with a mallet and he's in the midst of trying to shake it off, wheat-gold hair and wheat-gold eyes. She never did get around to fixing the hole in the neck of his shirt. He's threadbare all over.

"Go wake the twins up," Bethany sighs with her whole body. Andraste, what she would give to slump against him right now, go back to bed and pretend that none of this is happening. But she can't and so she doesn't, shakes her head instead. "We should probably get going. If Mari's serious, it's going to be a long night."

Alistair just nods.

"I know, love," he says, and he looks as tired as she feels. Her heart turns over in her chest when he touches her hand. "I know."

—

They make it out of the slaver tunnels into Lowtown's slums, and everything is on fire.

This is not an exaggeration.

_Everything is on fire_.

Darktown's been burning for days, but as the Qunari make their way through the city, the flames catch the wind and set Lowtown alight. Already it's climbing for Hightown, flickering gold-orange greedy-guts, eating its way through the slums' scaffolding, the market stalls, all the way out to where it burns bright to char away the docks. The crackle of burning wood is a merry song through the night, faint shadowy shapes in the distance, flaming pennants waving in the wind. Flinching away from the embers caught on the breeze, hiding behind crates stuck full of colourful throwing spears, the Hawke family makes it way through the fire and the flames. A mage, a templar, and an old woman: it's the set-up for a joke, only there's no one around to make the punchline.

Kirkwall is alight.

And oh, Maker, there are bodies everywhere.

Light slicks off dark sticky pools of blood, and Bethany catches herself stopping to put her hands on the fallen, whispering quiet prayers for safe passage beyond the Veil. Carina clings around her neck, crying softly, and she hushes her, humming low in her throat and tucking her daughter's head beneath her chin more securely. There are some things a person shouldn't ever have to see, especially when that person is Bethany Hawke's daughter. The Qunari don't kill clean.

Bethany looks at Alistair, and swallows down the nausea that rises in her throat.

They need to get out of the city. They needed to get out of the city yesterday.

(Where on _earth_ is Marian?)

And things only get worse the further they go. The sewer exit from Lowtown out to the Wounded Coast is on the other side of the market, past the Hanged Man and too close for comfort to the Qunari Compound. Any other night it wouldn't matter, but the smoke is greasy and thick. It's getting hard to breathe.

And Bethany can't shake the feeling like she's left someone she loves to die, all over again.

"Mother, take the girls to Lirene's, it's solid stone, it should hold up," Bethany says at last, panic at the back of her tongue. Or at least, she hopes it will, because already she knows what she's going to do, and it won't be to keep her daughters out of harm's way. The thought makes her want to vomit, but Mother is dependable, and if the whole city burns, there will be nothing left.

"Bethany, darling—"

"You want to go back, don't you," Alistair says, moving in front of her to sweep away a flare with his shield. He throws an exasperated look back over his shoulder, gaze jumping between Bethany and her mother and the twins, three generations of Hawke women. "Maker's breath, Beth."

Andraste, he knows her far too well.

"It's Marian," Bethany says, breath gone tight and fast and weird. They don't have _time_ for this. "I can't—you know I can't, Alistair. She's up there on her own!"

Something hangs suspended between them, indigo-blue night cut through with smoke and stars, embers on the breeze. Andraste, they've been here so many times. They've never been here at all.

And then Alistair's jaw goes tight and he's nodding.

"Right," he says, sharp as new steel. The fireglow slicks off the holy sword worked into the metal of his chest plate, deep dark grooves of shadow and blinding light. _Now her hand is raised, a sword to pierce the sun_. "Right, you take the twins, get out of sight, I'll come find you when I—"

"You're not going alone," Bethany says. Her eyes flash: poison, prison, pacing 'til dawn. "Not again."

Alistair's shoulders crumple, and that's relief if Bethany's ever seen it. A fierce wave of affection rises in her chest, because only Alistair would think she'd expect him to go save her sister on his own. It's their little home in Lowtown all over again, Alistair expecting the worst but hoping for the best. They live their lives in cyclical turns, so maybe it's not surprising at all.

As though if one of them goes, the other won't follow.

Bethany kneels to look the twins in the eyes, knees digging into the ground. She can feel the tremors all the way up from Darktown, the endless groaning as the city's underbelly begins to collapse. This newest offense against Kirkwall's person is just one more insult in a long line of insults; it is frankly astounding that the whole city entire hasn't just given up and sunk into the Waking Sea.

Liana and Carina stare back at her, Alistair's eyes in her own face, such a perfect blending. And they're so small, and so young, and the world is so big and full of dangers. This night in particular—Maker, if they all come out of it alive, it'll be more than half a miracle—but there are other things, too. Templars and Qunari and bears, and all of it, all of it out to swallow her family whole.

"Be good for Gran," Bethany tells them, forcing her voice level. This is the hardest, hardest thing she's ever had to do, maybe the hardest thing she's ever going to have to do; they are her _children_ , and Kirkwall is burning, and she may very well tear down the Veil if anything should happen to them. She would crack open the Void and rend it inside out, walk physically into the Fade, hunt down the Maker Himself if she thought it would help keep them safe.

But it won't, because none of those things are going to put the fires out.

"I love you," she whispers to them beneath the fire and flames, folding the two of them into her chest. They're afraid, she can feel it, why in the Maker's name is she leaving them, she shouldn't be leaving them. "I love you _so much_ , and I will see you in the morning—"

"Maker, Beth, what're you _doing_?"

Bethany jerks her head up, hope swooping in her stomach like acid. It can't be, because how could it. It can't be, because it's impossible. It can't be, because absolutely everything in the entire world is against it, because there's no way, no logic, no possibility.

It can't be, but it _is_.

Bethany _knows_ that voice.

He was never any good at letter-writing, her brother. Didn't have the patience for it, he used to say, never mind that he didn't have anyone to write to. A decade hasn't really changed that, although there's no arguing that he _does_ , in fact, have someone to write to now. Several someones, even, not that it makes any difference. He doesn't write letters, but he never did quite figure out how to shut his mouth. And here, now, perfectly still in the smoke and the ruin, her twin looks older. Bethany doesn't know why this surprises her—it's not like she hasn't aged, after all, changed and grown—but it does. He's a little taller, his shoulders wider than she remembers; there are lines around his eyes that didn't used to exist.

His platemail is Warden silver-and-blue, and she hardly recognizes him, but she knows him in her bones.

Oh, _Carver_.

The world begins to move again all at once, as a flaming arrow goes _whizzing_ by.

" _Shit_ ," says Alistair, with feeling.

And then the Qunari come.

They slip into fighting together like no time has passed; Carver into the fray, Alistair with his shield up to keep the arrows off, and Bethany casting and casting and casting. Ice and fire and force, and it's ugly, it's so ugly, the blackening of grey flesh, sudden explosions in the corner of her eyes. A barrier for Liana and Carina and Mother to duck down behind, safe as they can be with the burning world screaming, steel through bone and violence, violence, violence!

Violence, until there's only the Hawke family left breathing.

(For the moment, anyway.)

In the détente, panting for breath, Carver looks between Alistair and Bethany. "What did she do _now_?!"

It doesn't take a genius to figure out who he's talking about—only one person could wreak this kind of destruction, to go down laughing with it, and she's somewhere up in Hightown killing her way to the Viscount before the Arishok does—but there's blood smeared on Carver's face, and he's never looked more like Marian Hawke.

The irony nearly eats Bethany alive.

She doesn't ask him if he's coming with them. The griffon moulded into his pauldron's eyes gleam; the Wardens will have their due, but maybe Carver won't be a complete tit for once in his life.

"Mummy? Dad?"

Liana's voice is so small in the wounded night.

Bethany gasps, ice crystals trailing in her wake as she turns. The twins are tucked into Mother's arms, both of them beginning to cry because fear is tiring and they're so small. Alistair's eyes are hard as he sweeps away ash, already well on his way to kneeling down next to Mother and the girls and trying to keep everything from falling apart.

After everything, Bethany's own twin still hasn't met her daughters.

Well, there's never any time like the present. She doesn't say anything, just nods Carver over to the little alcove where they've settled for the moment, and she drops to the ground to wrap her arms around them again. Maker, she doesn't know how she's going to get through tonight. Her heart already feels like it's about to burst.

"I'm here, we're here, hush, Lia, don't cry," Bethany whispers into her daughter's curls. She looks up at Carver. His mouth has dropped open, nothing but shadows in the firelight. "It's safe, now."

Bethany will never remember what he says, here. She won't remember the way his eyes are wide and blue, and she won't remember the way Alistair touches her hip. She won't remember the way it feels like hiding, like an infected splinter, like a punctured lung. She won't remember the way Liana clings a little tighter, aware that something's going on above her head. She won't remember the metallic tang on blood hazing across her tongue, the prickle of magic, the _hunger_.

But she will remember that it hurts too much to breathe, and maybe that's enough.

"Take them to Lirene's, Carver, please. It's—please," and Bethany looks at Alistair because she can't look at Carver. He kind of grins at her, golden-eyed, and it makes her think that maybe they both grew up too fast, and that life is more than just who they are or who they want to be. Life is a burning city, embers like stars, sick green poison floating on the breeze. Life is the crush of elfroot against steel, the crush of dark red velvet, the crush of Alistair's mouth against hers. Life is Liana and Carina, laughing in the sunlight of a summer afternoon.

"Why?" Carver says, and he's not asking for a reason to take Mother to safety. As though he'd ever need that, when he can't stop himself from staring at the twins like someone hit him stupid. Bethany knows that look, because it's the same silvery net of _love_ and _awe_ that Alistair had worn, that she'd worn herself, that her elder sister wears every day of her life. Liana and Carina are a fundamental change in the Hawke family lexicon; they're more than reason enough.

What Carver is asking for is an explanation, and the only one she has isn't going to be enough.

"She came to find me," Bethany says. _When no one else could_ , she doesn't.

The colour drains out of Carver's face.

(They all have secrets, and this is one that Bethany never put to paper: that long dark night down in the foundries with only shades and a dead woman for company, because it was better that she let it lie. When she'd only had herself and her magic, her own two good hands and heart and brain. When she'd not thought of Carver at all. When she'd wondered, however briefly, what it would be like to die.)

But he doesn't ask.

Maybe he thinks he doesn't have the right. Maybe he _doesn't_ have the right. Bethany thinks of the way Alistair had looked at her afterwards, the colossal, abyssal emptiness that had set in behind his eyes, and thinks that maybe _no one_ has the right.

"Lirene's?" her twin says, instead.

"Lirene's," Bethany confirms, over Mother murmuring quietly to the girls. Not for the first time in her life, she wishes that she could split herself; leave one half with her children, send the other half off after her sister with her husband. Leaving them wedges itself beneath her skin and aches like a hole in her chest, but—

Andraste's pyre, she doesn't have a choice.

"So," says Alistair into Bethany's ear. "You really want to go back, love?"

"What would you do if it was me?"

"You know the answer to that," he murmurs, and for a moment the foundries bloom around them, dripping and dank to smother out the flames. Alistair's palm closes around her hip, and it's just this side of painful. It brings her back, but Kirkwall is _still_ on fire. There is _still_ faint screaming from all sides. In the distance, there are _still_ the shadows of Qunari horns.

And her sister is _still_ somewhere out there, all alone.

Bethany breathes in.

"Yes," she says. "I do."

And later, when Marian's taken a sword through the stomach and Isabela's screaming and the world feels like it might very well end, blood on her face and the Viscount's dead, Bethany will still be glad she did. When the Arishok's body's gone cold and she and Anders and Solona pour more magic into sealing her sister's wound into a nasty scar before she bleeds out, when she's shaking she's so tired and Alistair has to pick her up to get her to stand, Bethany is still, still, still glad that she went back.

Because Maker knows where they would be now, if she hadn't.

—

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_tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is massive what the dick


	6. hands made for pulling us through

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They name the first Champion of Kirkwall on a brilliantly clear morning as the sun rises over the Waking Sea, with marks still scorched into Hightown's white stone. There's salt on the breeze rolling in off the water, a crescendo of violins and sun-diamonds that rises along with the faint echoes of the Chant of Light still ringing from the Chantry. The sun sails cloudless this early in the morning, pure astringent blue.

Bethany's older sister stares out at the crowd from the dais where they've placed her, pale gaze cast out over nobles and common-folk alike, and watches the way they watch. It's such a hush; in the wake of the perpetrated violence, it's almost obscene. She's a strange thing, purple and crimson and silver, gauntlets sharpened into claws. Something out of legend, not human anymore.

_It's an honour, Champion_ drifts across the silent mass of people like smoke from a funeral pyre. The Revered Mother looks so tired. _An honour. Kirkwall will never be able to thank you_ —

Marian Hawke pulls the cowl of her new armour down over her eyes.

Her mouth is very red.

She doesn't smile.

—

Carina's magic manifests six days after Malcolm Hawke is born.

Springtime, again.

The pregnancy had been something of a surprise, coming the tail-end of the most stressful year of Bethany's life. Amid keeping her sister from bending the wrong way and keeling over, and playing peacemaker between her increasingly-combative cousin and her husband, and being mother to her daughters, there's hardly been the time to _think_ , much less pay attention to the clamouring of her body. Monthlies are an unfortunate reality, but she's missed them before—it all depends on the magic churning in her chest, a more constant cycle than any other Bethany has ever known—and so she'd not been worried. What can her body throw at her that she's not already lived through?

The body is the vessel for the spirit, but Bethany is no Spirit Healer.

( _That_ was made fair buggering obvious to anyone with eyes in the Viscount's palace, when she was all but useless trying to help Anders and Solona keep Marian alive. Bethany hasn't ever had much to do with spirits, and this has not changed.)

"I can't say I'm surprised," says Alistair, banishing the last charred bits of rug away to the netherworld of the fireplace's banked embers. He's grinning out of the corner of his mouth like this is the funniest thing he's ever seen because he's terrible, honestly. Carina only _just_ stopped crying and Liana is still at it, the pair of them wrapped up sniffling in Mother's arms. Everything stinks of thick grey smoke, all of the windows thrown open to air the Amell Estate clean.

Thank the Maker, it's raining. The damp takes the smell right out.

"Neither can I," Bethany murmurs. It's lost beneath a renewed wave of tears and hushing from the twins and Mother, respectively, and she sweeps the ashes away. Things catch on fire all the time in noble houses; this is Kirkwall, and there is nothing to see here.

Mal sleeps in his bassinet upstairs, entirely oblivious. He's a very quiet baby, more inclined to sleeping the day away than either of his sisters ever were.

This is an unexpected blessing, especially on days like this.

Because someone is going to have to teach Carina to control the new ability, and that someone is most likely going to be Bethany. There's Solona and Neria, too, and they'll help—Neria in particular, who Fadewalks like she breathes, wide-eyed and sometimes more magic than person—but mostly it's going to be Beth, in the dark and the quiet of the vault, teaching her daughter how to set things on fire with her mind.

Carina's three years old. Bethany had been six when her magic bloomed inside her chest. Solona had been four when the gates had opened and the Fade flooded in; the Amell-Hawke mages get younger all the time.

It's not a reassuring pattern.

But it is what it is.

"What d'you want to do?"

"Is leaving an option?" Bethany asks, but it's a bad joke and she knows it. She leans her into his chest, head so heavy against his collarbone as his arm goes around her waist. There's an easiness to the touch, long familiarity between them, and it's strange to think about but it's been six years. Six years. They've grown up, twined together and through, changed with the passage of time. "I wish leaving was an option."

"It could be," Alistair says, soft and slow. He doesn't look at her.

Bethany tilts her head back to look up at him, the soft dark cloud of her curls bunching up in the crook of his shoulder. Alistair's jaw is held tense, and a memory hits her: _magic_ , he'd said, and that strange edge to his voice that had melted away beneath the swirl of white petals and pollen, swept beside in the wake of everything that had come after. At the time she'd thought, _fear, maybe, maybe he doesn't want this anymore_ —

But no, it hadn't been fear, she realizes. It had been _worry_.

Oh, Alistair.

After a moment, Bethany inclines her head towards the sleeping twins and murmurs, "Maybe we should talk about this somewhere else?"

He huffs a laugh, burying his face into the top of her head. "You know, that might be a good idea."

_A good idea_ might be pushing it, but it's the only one they've got.

The evening is twilit violet dusk, silhouettes limned in gold strewn across Hightown's white stone. Bethany tucks her palm into the crook of Alistair's elbow; they're both dressed down, and she's grateful to feel the heat from his skin radiating through his shirt. The Wounded Coast is quite a walk from here, but Lowtown isn't, and it's by silent mutual agreement that they make their way down into Kirkwall's lower rings. It's late enough that even the market is beginning to close, vendors closing up shop and heading home, colourful banners tucked away until the sun rises again tomorrow.

Bethany and Alistair duck down a weathered side street, away from the last dregs of a populace on their way home. Here the shadows turn the stone pale blue, the curl of potted plant leaves like whorls of ink in their window-boxes. Lanterns glimmer from behind the shutters, and Lowtown's slums slowly come alive.

Andraste, it's been four years.

And Bethany's feet still know every step.

(It was the first home that she'd ever really felt safe in. The solid walls and the table with it's awful wobble, the window looking out over the Waking Sea, the little pots of herbs she'd kept on the sill; all of it had been a benediction, that perfect quiet golden time just before the sun sets condensed into real-time. Bethany doesn't think she'll ever really forget the way back, not even in the life after the next. It had been hers in a way nothing else had been, because it had been Alistair's, too.)

It's the smell that hits her first. Cold water over smelted metal, that horrible acrid burn that only ever lingered here, and the way it sunk into hair and clothes and skin until everything was rank with endings. It all rushes back like silky silver waves of saltwater, memories gushing up out of the bedrock to swamp over her:

_Marian, with blood or bread between her teeth, grinning like a knife-cut. Bethany, so tired, white-gold sunshine in through the window, shivering beneath a threadbare blanket. Carver, hair in his eyes, laid out on the floor. Alistair in templar armour, hands out and unable to look her in the eye, offering an escape. Alistair in shirtsleeves, a fond little grin shading towards crooked when he looks at her. Alistair in nothing at all, his mouth on her bare shoulder, his hand on her hip and her magic in the air just_ hovering _so close, he's touching her but it's not enough_ —

Bethany takes a deep breath in, sparkling grit between her lips.

Maker, they'd all been so _young_.

"We should have stayed here," Alistair says. He's staring up at the place where they used to live, the light from somewhere inside slicking over him.

But there's something so lonely about his face in this moment that Bethany's heart aches. She reaches over to tangle their fingers. She can feel his heartbeat through his skin.

"You might as well say we should have stayed in Lothering," she says. "Given the choice, templars are a little less horrible than darkspawn."

Alistair glances down at her, a strange little quirk to his lips. "Alright, you have me there."

"I know I do," Bethany says, but something about it sticks in her throat. _Leaving_ , as though leaving had ever been on the table, as though she even knows how to just pick up and _go_ when there's always been her mother and her sister and now the _children_ to think about. And it's funny, because leaving is what Marian was always the best at.

The fact that Marian hasn't left yet, after _Isabela_ —

Maker, but Bethany has no idea what that says.

Maybe her sister's finally hoping that someone's going to come _back_.

(Maybe Bethany is hoping that, too.)

"Are you going to tell me what you meant, now?" she asks, once they've slipped into the dark recesses of their old home. It doesn't look anyone's been here since they left: there's a clear inch of dust on the floor, and the windowsill looks like it hasn't been wiped down in a hundred years. The whole thing sticks in her craw, because, Maker, Bethany had loved this place. She'd loved it and she'd left it and she _misses_ it, misses it more than she'd even really realized. She swallows to keep her voice level, for all that there's still something hot and tight stoppering up her throat. She knows he doesn't mean it the way she thinks he means it, but fear isn't a rational thing, and something about being back here now makes her want to cry. "About leaving?"

Alistair sighs with his whole body, shoulders slumping inwards. There's calamity in his face. Collapse. A death knell to everything either of them had ever held up as _good_ and _right_. "I don't think I can be a templar anymore, love."

A hundred emotions flicker through her. Some of them don't even seem to be her own, more like emotional transference between their clasped hands than anything else. Bethany rides the dizzying mess of them out, waiting for them to distill down into something workable. She tips her head back to stare out the window into the star-cut sky, an indigo blanket prickled over with shining light. The twin moons hang over the sea, a perfect mirrored pair of silver discs glinting off the water.

They stand in the quiet and the dark for what feels like a long time, hand in bloody hand.

"Frankly, I'm amazed you kept it up this long," Bethany says, at last. She thinks of the shining blue of lyrium, dozens and dozens of philters tucked away in a cupboard under their bed where no one would ever think to look. "Why now?"

"You know why," Alistair says, quiet and heavy as he splays his free palm low over her abdomen. "I can't—not with Carina. It's not right. I don't want—"

_Malcolm, too_ , Bethany doesn't say. He's still just a baby, she can't know for sure but somehow, she knows. Somehow, she just knows. She carried her son for nine months, and she knows what it means to be a mage.

But only Alistair would worry that his children would be scared if they understood what precisely the world wanted for them. Only Alistair would worry that his children would be scared of _him_ if they understood what part he played in it; only Alistair would worry that mage or not, there is no simple way to explain the mandate in the Chant of Light.

And only Alistair would actually _do_ something about it.

Bethany slips into the concave curl of his chest, the movement as natural as breathing. They fit like this, the awful edges of beginning and ending clicking together seamless like missing puzzle pieces. Alistair puts his arms around her, breathing sharp into the top of her head because he's just as scared as she is. More so, even.

"You don't have to be a templar anymore if you don't want to," she tells him, so gentle. "You never really had to."

He chuckles, a low wounded noise, and they both remember those first delirious days when they were trapped in the blazing white Gallows, needing to get out as much as they needed to breathe. Ser Thrask's office, and hiding in the shadow of a pillar, and being young, so _young_ , so young and brash and full of fear. "We both know I didn't have a choice."

"I'm sorry," Bethany murmurs. Kirkwall's not been kind to Alistair.

(Maker, so few things have been kind to Alistair.)

Alistair shakes his head into her hair again. "It kept us safe."

She would protest that it really only kept _her_ safe, but then… Bethany thinks of the way he comes home, sometimes, and how he crawls into bed behind her to wrap himself around her like he might shake himself apart if she wasn't there to paste him back together. They keep each other safe, as they always have. Through darkspawn and Lothering and templars and now this, they keep each other whole and even keel.

Once upon a time, Bethany had asked if he'd be alright with pretending.

But it had never really been pretend.

"So what do you want to do?" she asks him, after long minutes have passed away in silence. Alistair takes a shuddery breath, arms tight around her, desperately trying to anchor himself into the world. Bethany lets him hold on. The sea air is crisp and salted around them, heavy with the weight of all the things left unsaid.

"I don't know," Alistair says. "Sorry, it's shite timing."

"Why?"

"The Knight-Commander's getting worse," he murmurs, and that's all the explanation Bethany needs. She hasn't seen Ser Cullen recently, but that might be because he'd accidentally stumbled onto Solona and Neria laughing in the back garden, and turned white as a sheet before he'd run for it. When Bethany had asked Solona about it later, the woman had only closed her eyes and shaken her head. Some things still burn, and it really isn't any of Bethany's business, anyway.

"She's always going to get worse, Alistair," Bethany says, thinking of the ripple of fear that passes from the face of one mage to another to another any time the Knight-Commander does anything to send clanging echoes all through Kirkwall. How many times has she looked at Merrill across the Hanger Man's stained tables and found her own ashen expression reflected back at her? How many times have they shared a moment of throat-strickening terror before it was swallowed down with a mouthful of cheap ale? How many times have they all—Bethany, Merrill, Anders—hidden in Marian's shadow, flexing their fingers around their staves, holding their magic softly like flowers in the mouth?

How many times has Bethany thought: _normal girls don't do this, be normal, be normal_?

Here in the dark of the place where they used to live, it's not hard to admit that it's too much.

(Maker, but it's _too much_.)

She slumps down against him, shaking her head. There's nowhere good to go, from here. Nowhere safe. She thinks of their daughter, and wonders if maybe they really wouldn't have been better off staying in Lothering, after all. Death would be better than a Circle. She knows that, now. Alistair knows it, too.

"D'you think it'll be bad?" Bethany whispers.

"Probably," Alistair says. He pauses, strange and unsure. "…Will you stay, even if it is?"

"Alistair, do you really not know by now?" Bethany asks him, pulling back to look him in the eye, because this is something she needs to say. Something she's always needed to say. Will always need to say, because he will always need to hear it.

"Yes," she tells him, hands around his face. "Of course I'll stay. Yes. Always, yes."

—

"—even bring your templar, if you want."

"To a wyvern hunt? In _Orlais_? I don't know, Mari, that sounds like…"

"Like I'm going to use it as an excuse to rob an Orlesian duke blind?" Marian asks easily, a slow, amused smile carving its way across her face because she's always seen through to the heart of things. Bethany's older sister bends over Malcolm's bassinet, dangling her fingers in front of his face to watch the way he laughs, hardly paying attention to the conversation at all. "That is the plan, yes."

"Are you _trying_ to get killed?!"

"I don't know if _trying_ is the right word, darling, but—well, if the shoe fits?"

Something goes very tight in Bethany's throat.

Maker, it's been like this for weeks.

It started the exact moment that Marian woke up with a nasty scar down her middle, gaze frantic, only to find that Isabela was gone. Then, and in every moment since, her sister's killing edge has turned strange and careless, almost casually cruel.

Bethany's sister is many things, but she is cruel only when she hurts.

(Like bleeding poison from a wound, Marian needs to get it out of her system.)

And for Isabela, Bethany's sister hurts.

Bethany doesn't ask her why she's been invited; with every passing day, the noose of the Gallows seems to grow tighter, and Marian draws all the mages in her sphere of influencer nearer as a result. Even Alistair's begun to sort of— _hover_ , sticking a little closer than he used to. It would be annoying if Bethany didn't understand. The Knight-Commander's got an awful red flicker in her eyes, most days.

But Maker knows, she can't bring the children.

"I don't think Orlais is any place for little ones," Bethany says, quietly.

"We're not bringing Mother," Marian's amused little smile grows and then she's smirking the way she used to, when they were all young and whole and unafraid. "If anyone's got practice handling headstrong baby mages, it's her."

"I was not a headstrong baby mage," Bethany says

"No. But you _were_ a mage, and I was headstrong enough for the both of us!"

"Oh, Andraste, _Marian_ —"

"I _am_ our mother's daughter," Marian says, laughing, but it sounds like an open wound, jagged around the edges. She turns to look at Bethany full in the face, feathery wisps of ink-dark hair wild around her eyes, and for a second there's a flash of emotion in her sister's gaze that Bethany can't name. It lives somewhere between _need_ and _weakness_ , but bit down hard upon and nearly drowned in forced self-confidence. It's something like—

_Oh_ , Bethany thinks, with a sudden blooming ache in her chest. _Vulnerability_.

She gentles.

"If you really want me there, Mari, I'll come with you—" Bethany says, tucking her curls away from her face. Sun slants in through the window, golden as Liana and Carina's laughter from downstairs, golden as force magic, golden as Alistair's once-bitten-twice-shy-crooked grin. She wants to catch hold of it and pull it inside of her chest like courage, something real to keep her going because it's so rare that Marian ever really asks for anything. Her sister opens her mouth to crow triumph, but Bethany continues before she gets the chance, smiling, "—on the condition that _you_ tell Mother what we're up to."

Because in a way, Marian is right: Leandra Hawke is phased by nothing, especially the shenanigans of little mages.

"Oh, Bethy, that's just unfair, if I told Mother half of what I get up to, she'd lock me in the Gallows herself—"

Bethany closes her eyes for a second longer than a standard blink. Alistair's been out on the Wounded Coast for three nights and it hits too close, today, too close to home. "Don't even joke about that. Not when—not when Carina—"

Marian goes still.

And she stays very still for a very long time, gaze tracking its way from Bethany to Malcolm still burbling in his bassinet and then back, never lingering anywhere long enough to make sense of what she's thinking about. Whatever conclusions are coalescing behind Marian's face, they're shrouded in the shadow of brilliant blue eyes and brilliant red paint, and there's no figuring them out. She straightens, shoulders going back, and a grin that looks like what _loss_ feels like cracks its way across her mouth.

"Sometimes I forget," Marian says, and there's something so quietly melancholy about her voice, something so terribly, infinitely sad, "that you're not just my little sister, anymore."

"Mari, it's—"

"No, Bethy, it's not alright. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have—" Marian breaks off even as she reaches across the space between them. But it's an aborted thing, and she flinches back before she touches Bethany's shoulder. "You don't have to come."

_Sorry_ seems to be a thing that's going around, recently, but it never ought to have come from the people it's come from. There are so many things in the world to be sorry for, but asking for help isn't one of them.

Bethany is going to say as much.

She's going to say something about asking for help and how she thinks that her older sister never really learned how to do it right, and she's going to say that needing isn't so terrible, and she's going to say that the fact that Marian misses Isabela the way she does isn't _wrong_. She's going to say a lot of things, because she needs to say them.

But Malcolm starts to cry and then she's halfway to picking him up before she's realized that she's forgotten to get the words out. Bethany hums soft nonsense at her son, calming already. She doesn't feel the dry press of lips to her cheek, but when she looks up—

Well, Marian's gone.

—

Alistair gets home, kisses Bethany's shoulder like an afterthought, staggers off to bed.

(The relief is almost a tangible thing.)

And a week goes by.

And then two.

And then three. They're well and true into the wet season, now. Drakonis rushes in drippy grey, and the whole city seems to fall sick with it, one long endless sniffle. Kirkwall is quiet without Marian around to feed fuel to its' slow-burning fires, but the stories that Alistair brings home from the Gallows are bleak. Sometimes, Bethany wishes her husband wasn't so prone to always putting other people first; it hurts when he comes home and stares at their children like he's never going to be able to look enough, and hurts worse when it turns to something so self-loathing that she thinks he might be sick.

_Just a little while longer_ , he'd said, that night in the dark and the dust, but Bethany doesn't know if he's going to make it that long. She doesn't know if he can.

For that matter, she doesn't know if she _wants_ him to. Andraste's blood, Bethany would prefer it if Alistair could just stay with her, quiet and safe and far away from the bloody reality of Kirkwall's stewing extremes.

But he can't and she can't and they _can't_ , not when Knight-Commander Meredith watches their family the same way a snake watches the sky for a hawk: with all the respect due a deadly adversary, and with all the starving ambition due a possible meal. The Champion of Kirkwall would make an excellent trophy, if she allowed herself to be, and the Knight-Commander is so hungry she's hollow.

Marian and Meredith, two sides of the same coin, flipped and shining and catching the light as they fall.

Bethany stands in the kitchen with soap suds up to her elbows, listening to the sounds of Hightown waking up outside the window. It's early, still, the faint thready notes of the Chant winding down the streets with the odds and ends of the day's sermon, but finally people are beginning to mill about.

The templars patrol in pairs, rigid in the shoulders, stride long. With their faces hidden, they don't even look like people, just shining silverite monoliths of the Circle's institutional power. Maybe that's the point—men and women in armour is one thing, but men and women in templar armour is quite another.

It's just that they never used to be so many, nor so well-armed.

And Bethany thinks of Alistair, so sick with himself over it down in the hot working guts of the templar stronghold, and wonders if they both haven't made a terrible mistake.

"You know, I wasn't even gone a whole month, you don't have to make that face,"

"Did you know that the Knight-Commander's set up patrols? Every hour, on the hour. It never stops," Bethany says, with a pained little twist to her lips. "They're out right now, look."

"Yes, I did see that," says Marian, consideringly. She comes to stand next to Bethany, arms crossed over her chest as she catches sight of the templar patrol Beth had been watching go by. Her lip pulls up from her teeth into a sneer. "Cocky little bastards, aren't they."

Bethany doesn't reply, because any disagreement would be a lie. She just sighs, instead. "You _could_ help me with the dishes, you know."

"And let my fingers turn all pruney? Maker, no, the horror! I'm good where I am, Bethy. Besides—" and here, Marian breaks off to tilt her head, something catlike and strange in her face, "—I need to talk to our resident templar. Have you seen him recently?"

Bethany blinks down at her hands beneath the surface of the water. Soap bubbles _pop_! at her wrists, rainbow-rimmed and shining in the reflection of the sky. Alistair's down in the Gallows, or out on the Wounded Coast, or—no, she hasn't seen him, not since yesterday.

"No," Bethany says, slowly. "I haven't. Why?"

"Just news out of Chateau Haine that I think he might want to hear," Marian says. She turns that strange, catlike gaze on Bethany, next. "And you ought to know, too, but he should hear it first."

"Who did you kill _this_ time?"

"No one important, dear! Don't tell Mother."

Because that's reassuring.

But Marian's looking at her kind of sad and kind of fond, some half-forgotten lullaby hidden in the corners of her mouth, and it's so painfully familiar that they could be children again. Carver in the other room, Father coughing, Mother out in the garden trying to figure out how not to kill everything she touches. Dog barking, Marian so sharp, and Bethany herself, always trying to keep her magic tied down beneath her skin. Lothering's summer furnace heat so heavy on her skin, dry grass crunching under her foot, and Alistair, Maker, _Alistair_ —

The image fades because it's not real, and it hasn't been real for a very long time.

Here is what's real:

The Waking Sea outside the window, the templar patrols on the hour every hour, Orana and Bodahn yelling from the other room and Mother out in the garden with the twins because some things never change. Carver's gone and Father's dead, but Dog's still barking and Marian's still so sharp and Bethany is still herself, still always trying to keep her magic tied down beneath her skin. Kirkwall's salt air, sand between her toes down on the coast, and Alistair…

Maker, _Alistair_.

"Have you—" Marian's voice breaks through Bethany's reverie, chipped a little around the edges like she's not quite sure what she wants to say, or like what she's about to say is going to hurt, "—have you heard from Isabela?"

"Mari, I—"

"Have you?"

"No," Bethany says, and hates herself for the honesty in it.

"Right," Marian says, closes her eyes for one beat too long as she swallows. It stings like pouring salt in an open wound, and Bethany watches the way her sister's hand comes up to curl into a fist at her abdomen. It's an unconscious thing, and that makes it worse. "Excellent. That's—alright, it's fine, everything's fine."

It's not fine. But Marian never was any good at pretending, and it's kinder to let her have this. Bethany would touch her shoulder if she thought the physical comfort would be appreciated, except that might only make it harder. Marian was never very good at accepting help, either.

And so Bethany goes back to doing the dishes, and affords her sister the privacy to pull herself together.

"If you see Alistair, tell him I'm looking for him," Marian says, finally. "And Bethy?"

Bethany looks up. "Yes?"

Her sister smiles. In the trembling quiet, she's clear-eyed and honest and softer than Bethany's ever seen her, the mantle of _Champion_ drawn back to expose the woman underneath; she's someone else entire, someone that Bethany doesn't know. "I'm glad you're happy, sweet. Be good."

Marian closes the kitchen door behind her with a quiet _click_.

In her absence, the minutes stretch out long and perfect and endless.

Like an echo, or a whisper, or a strangled apology.

Worse: like a goodbye.

(Empty as a pillaged grave. Still as water in an undisturbed pool. Quiet as the aftermath of a city burned down to nothing but ashes and stone. The round of a shoulder as someone turns away. An endlessly blank grey sky. Unspooled thread, dreams put away for another day, unsweetened tea gone cold.)

Bethany leaves the dishes in the soapy water, sinks into a chair at the table, and starts to cry.

And this is how Mother and Solona find her a long time later, red around the eyes and drawing lines in the table's wood for lack of something better to do with her hands. Neither one of them say anything; they just sit down on Bethany's either side. Solona reaches out to cover Bethany's hands, picked over with splinters and bleeding beneath the nail, palms already glowing with healing magic.

"Stop that, you're hurting yourself," Solona says, so carefully gentle. "You're as bad as Nerry."

It should burn that she's here when family is such a hard thing, and when Bethany's own sister has gone off to start another war, or save another city, or swallow down another mouthful of bitter ale. It should burn, when she looks so much like Marian. It should burn.

But it doesn't.

"Thank you," Bethany says, and means it.

Solona shrugs, gone a little pink around the ears, smiling sort of shy. She's a much better healer than Bethany is, better than Father had been, even. Better than Carina will be, probably, because Bethany's daughter's magic already pushes out of her green and growing, a magic unlike any she's ever seen before. Maybe it's Kirkwall, but maybe it's just her daughter's father, shining through.

And all of a sudden, Bethany misses Alistair so much that her teeth ache.

Mother doesn't bother to ask why Bethany was crying. Leandra Hawke knows better than anyone that life is difficult and sometimes ugly, and that crying can take the edge off. She waits patiently until Solona is done with the healing and the last sparkling flickers of magic have died away, before she deigns to speak. "I put the twins down for a nap. They ran themselves ragged, they're worse than your siblings ever were."

They both know this is a lie, but it's exactly what she needs to hear.

"Oh, Maker, I'm sorry," Bethany laughs, half-watery and half-wrung out, rubbing at her eyes. "I've been useless all day."

"Everyone has days like that," Solona says. She pushes a cup of tea into Bethany's hands. "Here, drink that, you probably need liquid—"

The kitchen floor creaks. Usually it's not something to be commented on, because the Amell Estate is an old building made of old wood, so of course the floors creak. But the thing that is the creaking is very dependent on the weight of the person stepping down, and usually it's only this loud when Alistair's come home in the templar armour, near a hundred pounds of metal on his frame—

The three Amell-Hawke women all look up at the same time.

And the blood drains from Solona's face.

"Oh," she says. "Hello, Ser Cullen."

There is a difference between knowing something and _knowing_ it. There is a difference between hearing Alistair talk about his wife's cousin, and being presented with the face of a woman he'd thought long dead. There is a difference between accepting that Marian Hawke is a near-doppelgänger for Solona Amell, and accepting that Solona Amell is sitting in the kitchen of her ancestral home alive and well.

There is a difference between past and present, and Bethany watches as the two collide in Ser Cullen's face like molten metal into seawater, all turning to steam in the hiss and spit of something dying.

Because for all that Marian Hawke and Solona Amell could be twins, there is no confusing them.

This was a long time coming. Bethany knows that Solona's bit down bloody on the open aching cave of her own chest to avoid Ser Cullen. She doesn't know why, doesn't know the history, but she knows that Solona's fear of templars is greater than her own, and she knows that the one and only time her cousin spoke of the Aeonar, there had been nothing but a very quiet death in her face.

It's the little things that make up a life, and the end of it.

(Or, in this case, the illusions that we build ourselves to keep standing when our knees are weak.)

Ser Cullen sort of—slumps, in the doorway, like someone's punched him in the gut and knocked the wind out of him. Hi shoulder pulls up at a sharp pained angle that looks uncomfortably like he's trying to ride a bitter pain out, the kind that has to breathed out slowly through the lungs.

"Oh, come on," he says, oddly strangled, gulping for air. "That's not _fair_ , I'd just gotten used to Hawke wearing your face."

A dead stillness falls. Solona is pale as snow.

"You said that out loud, Ser Cullen," Mother says, after several long moments where no one even dares to breathe. "We try to use our inside voices when we don't want others to hear what we're thinking, remember."

Ser Cullen makes a sound very much like a goat dying.

And the tension in the air begins to dissipate.

The key word: _begins_.

Ser Cullen doesn't move to enter the kitchen, and neither does Solona move to rise from the table. There's a kind of— _lingering_ , set adrift from reality, ghosts of the past like smoke from a funeral pyre. Or spirits, maybe, hungry hands pressing against a thin veil to try to reach through.

There is a Harrowing here. It is such an acrid regret.

"Let's leave them to it," Mother murmurs to Bethany. "Come along, darling, we'll just get in the way."

And with that Leandra Hawke sweeps from the kitchen, Bethany following haphazardly behind her a moment later, and doesn't deign to speak another word to either of those left behind. But that's the way Bethany's mother _is_ , the way she's always been; she thinks it's easier to let people sort things out themselves if they're not given a choice, and so she takes the choice to not make a choice away.

_I'm sorry_ , Bethany mouths to Solona over her shoulder.

Solona just sort of smiles. _It's alright_ , the smile says, even though it really isn't.

It's never alright to leave someone with their worst nightmare come to life. And that's what it is, for the both of them: for Ser Cullen, it's a dead woman come back to life. For Solona, it's a cataclysm. There are no right answers to this, but Bethany suspects that Ser Cullen is going to have to do some long, hard thinking. Alistair did, and is doing still. _I don't know if I can do this, anymore_.

But, well— _Mother_.

(Marian comes by everything that she is honestly.)

The humming man's white flowers still bloom outside in the garden. There's something terrible about it, because all Bethany can associate them with now is the foundries and the muck and the mire there, the blood still so thick between her teeth. It doesn't matter that they're beautiful, or that her grandmother planted them, or that Bethany had loved them, once, loved the way the petals scattered and the perfume of them was the only one that didn't give her a headache in those long early days after the twins were born. The horror of later washed it all away.

But if Mother can look at them every day and manage to swallow down the darkness that always seems to hover around them, then Bethany can swallow down her fear of the Gallows and the templars and leave her cousin alone with Alistair's best friend, because he _is_ Alistair's best friend and he should know better by now.

Ser Cullen won't hurt Solona.

Bethany won't let him.

—

Solona finds them much later, outside in the garden with Alistair and the children. It's a golden afternoon, which maybe makes up for the middle of the day, like Kirkwall is trying to apologize for being the way that it is. The twins have run and hidden deep in the recesses of the foliage in a pick-up game of go-seek that neither of their parents had agreed to but seem to be part of anyway, and Malcolm's blinking around at the world from the safety of his grandmother's arms.

"Buh," says Malcolm.

"Buh," agrees Leandra, watching out of the corner of her eye as her niece slips a little clumsily into one of the wrought-iron chaises, the hunch of her shoulders melancholy and the line of her mouth lost. She looks so much like Marian that sometimes it's hard to believe; the way they mirror one another brings back echoes of Leandra's own long-lost cousin-twin, her face on another person's body. Maybe it's not a surprise that Revka's oldest daughter might as well be Leandra's own.

It's not the first time the Amell blood has bred true, after all.

"Has anyone seen Nerry?" Solona asks, finally, playing with a stray thread at her wrist. She looks like a spirit in the sunlight, gone a little see-through, somehow, like there's not much of her left. "I went looking, but…"

"I don't know," Leandra says, considering. Twins, always; there's something in that. "Liana, Carina, come here, please!"

A minute of silent, and then a distant voice pipes up, "We're coming, Gran!"

(From far off, Leandra can _hear_ Alistair muttering to Bethany, probably pickled all over with thorns and roses and the other, stranger, _wilder_ things that live in the bushes. He says, "Why do they always listen to—?" beneath Bethany whispering back, "Alistair, they're getting out of the garden, which means _we_ can leave, too!")

The twins come tumbling out with leaves in their hair, giggling and batting at one another as they skip in tandem to come hover at Leandra's sides. They're such a _happy_ pair of little girls, so entirely carefree, that sometimes it makes Leandra's heart hurt. It's how every childhood should be, but she knows that it wasn't the kind of childhood either of their parents had. The world is such an ugly place, and Kirkwall is the ugliest of it all, but sometimes it's alright.

"Hi, Gran," says one of them brightly. Liana, probably, because Liana always does the talking. "What did we do this time?"

"Nothing, darling," Leandra says, smiling at them. "But I think Aunt Solona could use a hug, and I need to talk to your mother."

"Oooooh," Liana nods. "D'you want a hug, Aunt Sonny?"

"I could use one, I think, yes," Solona says, a little tremulously.

And this is how Bethany finds them, when she and Alistair finally escape the reaching cling of the shrubbery's vines: Liana and Carina curled up around Solona, who looks like she isn't sure how to keep two small girls in one chair, and Mother looking entirely pleased with herself with Mal gone back to sleep because none of this matters to him, anyway.

"Your family," Alistair says, in quiet, utter disbelief.

" _Our_ family," Bethany replies, poking him in the side.

"Don't remind me," he says, but he's got a soft, crookedly fond grin tucked into the corners of his mouth. He puts his arm around her, tugs her into his side, and it's just that they fit so well into all of each other's missing spaces that Bethany's heart stutters in her chest. Andraste, it's ridiculous that just a _grin_ can still do this to her.

(She's not eighteen anymore, but Alistair always does manage to make her feel like she hasn't grown up at all, in the very best way.)

"Have either of you seen Neria?" Mother asks. "Oh, and Alistair, you might want to go collect Ser Cullen. He might still be in the kitchen, I don't know if Bodahn's going to be able to scrape him off the floor on his own."

"Cullen? I thought he wasn't going to be here 'til—?"

Mother inclines her head to the side just enough to indicate Solona beneath the pile of limbs and hair that the twins can be when they so choose.

"Oh, Maker," Alistair says. He pinches the bridge of his nose, face scrunched up like he can't believe this is his life. "Right, I'll go collect him and dump him in the sewers or sommat. Beth, love—"

"Mm?"

Alistair chucks her under the chin. "Keep everyone out of trouble for me."

He doesn't say _look after yourself_ , or _I'll be back_ , or _I love you_ , but it's all there in the brush of skin against skin. Bethany smiles up at him, hands coming up to curl into the hem of his shirt to keep him close just for one moment longer.

"You know I will," she says, and then a bubble of laughter pops out of her throat. "Besides, Marian's gone. It won't be so difficult."

Alistair drops a kiss to her forehead with a snort and then he's off to go peel Ser Cullen from the kitchen, ambling away with his hands stuffed into his pockets, loose and comfortable the way he always is when he's not wearing the templar armour, white and gold and dark leather brown. Bethany is terribly fond of him.

"Darling? Have you seen Neria?"

Bethany shakes herself out of staring after her husband like some lovesick girl. That doesn't help anyone, and it's not productive. "I think she went down to see Merrill? Or maybe Anders, they've been together a lot, recently."

"Oh, Andraste, where's she got to, I'm—I need her right now," Solona makes a soft wet sound, a wounded gasp-sob that she smothers into the twins' hair. It's ugly, sometimes, the way that she and Neria care about one another; too intense, or maybe just too dependent. Like a bird searching the dead grass by a dried-up lake for a place to make a home.

"Lia, Rina," Bethany says, gently, "I think it's time we let Aunt Sonny go, now. Mother, would you—"

"Come alone, girls," Mother says, because Mother always knows exactly what to say. "Let's go see if we can't convince Bodahn to ruin your supper."

"He never lets us ruin our supper," Liana says, wrinkling her little face up. She looks very much like an annoyed chipmunk, all puffed out cheeks and big golden-dark eyes, brown and brown and brown. "Orana's nicer."

"Sandal's nice- _est_ ," Carina counters, and then they both giggle, chorusing, "Enchantment!"

Mother raises an eyebrow. " _Girls_."

"Yes, Gran, we're coming," and they scramble off Solona's lap with all the grace four-year-olds can manage, dangling for a moment before they hit the ground running, scampering back into the estate. They're so small, the both of them, two bright little streaks of colour darting through the afternoon. Carina still can't summon fire without flinching, and Liana's fierce and flighty by turns, but they're still so young and learning to live with it.

Bethany helps Solona up, brushing the exhaustion away from her face the way she does to Alistair, the sparkle of her magic a quiet _don't give up_ that she doesn't know how to voice. Her sister smiles, but it's her cousin who presses the magic right back into Bethany's hands, because mage to mage is something that Marian doesn't really understand.

Every breath is a prayer, after all.

"Be careful, you two," Mother says. She's absently rocking Malcolm, a kind of back-and-forth _sway_ that isn't entirely conscious. It's funny how priorities rearrange themselves when children are involved. "Do try to come back in one piece."

It sounds exactly like something she'd say to Marian, and it's not reassuring at all.

But this is just par for the course. As they leave Hightown's glossy marble streets, white-cut stone weathers to chipped new-leather, soft and supple and the same colour as Alistair's crooked grin. Bethany wonders.

"Solona, are you—what did Ser Cullen say? Did he—?"

A light goes out in her cousin's eyes like window shutters snapping closed. Solona breathes out slowly. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Oh. Um, I—"

"It's just Nerry," Solona says. The awful nothing in her face remains like an open wound, and Bethany wishes that she could really understand. Alistair is the only templar she's ever wanted, but Solona lived in a Circle for most of her life, and the healing isn't finished yet. "She's the only one who'd—I need her. It has nothing to do with you, I promise. I'd tell you if I could."

And Bethany understands.

Because when things get to be too much, Alistair burns her clean. When there's nothing left, Alistair is there to salt the madness and pack it away, take it into himself to keep Bethany standing upright. And she needs him for that, needs him in her bones because she can't do it on her own. Alistair swallows the screaming in her head, anchors her down, returns her to herself; Alistair knows Bethany at her worst, knows the dark sticky place behind her ribs as well as he knows the back of his hand. Even if she didn't love him, she would still _need_ him, and perhaps that's worse.

Maker knows, she can't begrudge Solona for needing Neria the same way.

And so Bethany touches Solona's elbow, and together they slip nameless into Lowtown's hissing insides, the bubbling roil of too many people in too small a space. There's a statue of Bethany's sister going up down by the docks, and even though they still haven't quite got the face right, they've got it right enough that Solona has to keep her head down and Bethany has to lead. Kirkwall does so love its new Champion, but a mob might put a damper on the outing, and Solona isn't half as vicious as Marian is even on a good day.

Laughter spills out of the Hanged Man like the slop of bad ale over the side of a tankard.

(It's good to know that some things never change.)

Under the cover of Marian's ever-lengthening shadow, Bethany and Solona weave their way down to the alienage. It's quiet here, cool beneath the shade of the vhenadahl's stretching branches. Pale green light filters down through the leaves, little glimpses of the sky so very far away. There are no stars here, anymore, if there ever were at all.

"—really should just go see Anders, I don't know why this is so _difficult_ , he's very—"

"—you _know_ I can't, he'll ask _how_ —!"

"So just _tell_ him—!"

"Nerry, if you need to yell at someone, come yell at me," Solona says, following the sound of Neria's voice in through the unlocked door to Merrill's little home. The rooms bloom lilac-pale around them, cut with little scatterings of sunlight in through the holes in the roof; not even the alienage escaped the Qunari rampage, but so far there's been nothing done to fix it, and likely there won't be at all. The templars have mages on their minds, and humans with coin. Alienages

"Swan? What's—have you been crying? Why are you all—the Fade's all _wrong_ around you, it's like when that templar boy who followed you around used to—" Neria stops, squints, reassess, and then her voice drops like a stone in clear water. " _What did he do_."

"Nothing, Nerry, I just wanted to see you—"

"No, he did something, I can see he did," Neria says fiercely, scowling as she pushes long white hair out of her face and very nearly _stomps_ her way into Solona's arms, reaching up to pat her cheeks. "It's like Jowan all over again, I can't believe this, I _knew_ we should have gone farther away, there's nothing good here and Anders could come with us—what did that idiot boy _do_ to you, Swan?!"

Bethany's never really watched someone collapse from the outside, before, but she watches it now as Solona does it. She knows what it looks like when Alistair collapses, but usually he's collapsing into Bethany herself. Being on the outside is new.

But as it turns out, watching someone collapse is watching someone collapse.

Falling apart is such an intensely private affair.

Merrill's standing just a little way off, hands tucked behind her back, and very carefully not watching how Neria seems to _rip_ the Veil apart, the air around her shimmering sick yellow-green. No one talks about the things that the elf-girl can do, least of all the elf-girl herself, but sometimes Bethany catches flashes of the immense terrifying power that she keeps leashed beneath her skin, and has to shudder. Magic lives in all things, but Neria seems to breathe it.

"I'm taking Swan home," Neria announces. "Bee, you—fix Merry, she won't listen to me even though she _knows_ I'm right!"

"Merrill?" Bethany asks. "What's—?"

"Show her!"

And so Merrill does.

There's a strange, hesitance to the way she pulls her hands out from behind her back, and it takes Bethany a moment to understand that it's because every movement _hurts_. Merrill's hands are bleeding. Her hands are bleeding _everywhere_ , there's so much blood that Bethany can suddenly near taste it, horrible and metallic at the back of her throat, a hot red wash. It screeches through, blocking everything else out. Marian could come storming in with a horde of raging Qunari and it wouldn't have been able to take Bethany's attention away; Solona and Neria's relatively unobtrusive leaving doesn't register at all.

"Oh, Andraste," Bethany murmurs. "What happened, Merrill? What—who did this?"

"Oh, um. I—I don't think you want t'know?" Merrill says. She shrinks in on herself, shoulders up around her ears, curved in so small she's hardly even breathing. Without the buffer of Neria and Solona, Merrill's home is very quiet; the _drip_ of water into the washbasin seems to echo. Sunlight glints off broken glass, and the blood on Merrill's hands is brilliant, bleeding, victory red.

"If this is my sister's fault, I'm going to kill her," Bethany says, something gone tight and hot in her throat.

"Oh, no! No, it wasn't! Hawke would have—Anders, you know how she is about making sure that we're all—and Nerry, Nerry tried to make me—" and Merrill breaks off to duck her head, flushing brightly beneath the vallaslin. This, more than anything, convinces Bethany that whatever's shredded Merrill's palms, it had nothing to do with her older sister. Thank the Maker. "But, no, it—it wasn't."

"Let me see," Bethany says. There are shining shards of glass embedded in Merrill's palms. "Oh, Maker, I'm going to have to get these out. Did you break a mirr—?"

"No," Merrill shakes her head fast and frantic. Her braids have come loose, an ink-dark mane around her face that makes the rest of her look even smaller than usual. Her gaze flickers to the back corner where that cursed mirror sits, still whole. Damn it. "No, I—not mine, anyway, it was—are you sure you want t'know?"

"Yes," Bethany says, and frowns as she pulls out a particularly jagged shard. There's blood everywhere, air gone rank with it. They both swallow hard. "It looks like you lost a fight with a window."

"I did, sort of. Fenris can't read," Merrill says, like this is an explanation.

"What does that have to do with anything?" Bethany asks, absently wiping dark red away. Her magic rises in her chest, blue-green and sparkling as ever. If there's one thing she can appreciate about the alienage, it's how very little sway the templars have; the healing comes easier when Bethany's not afraid. "Watch it, this is going to hurt."

"Ow," Merrill winces, but doesn't pull her hands away. "Well, he can't—he can't _read_."

"So?"

"So, Hawke offered to teach him."

"Oh, no, she _didn't_ ," Bethany says, because Bethany knows her sister, and of course she did. Marian is sharp and vicious and violent, saviour and martyr by turns, but a teacher? The _last_ thing her sister ought to be doing is teaching anyone anything, let alone teaching Fenris how to read. Teaching someone how to read requires the very particular mindset of _no question is a stupid question_ and an endless fountain of patience, neither of which her sister has. "She did, didn't she?"

"Well, yes," Merrill says, flops her shoulders up and down. "She's not a very good teacher."

"I can't imagine she would be," Bethany sighs. "I don't see what it has to do with this, though."

"They needed books," and again, Merrill begins to draw into herself, hunching up small as she can. "I have a lot of books. And patience. And I've—I've taught people to read, before? Some of the children needed help. So…"

It clicks, then, and Bethany suddenly knows exactly what's happened.

Because ever since Isabela left, Marian's been worse than useless, throwing herself at things that are liable to get them all murdered in their beds. Dragons, Orlesian dukes, the odd Carta family; there's nothing sacred, or at least nothing unkillable, so far as Bethany's sister has been concerned.

But teaching Fenris to read likely wouldn't have gone over very well.

It would be too… _stable_.

But the sudden lack of that self-same stability would leave Fenris half-mad and Merrill half-guilty, and the pair of them alone—Maker's breath, it's a miracle they haven't torn each other apart. Bethany looks down at Merrill's bleeding palms and thinks that maybe, they already have. She picks out another glittering shard, methodic, rolling the words around in her mouth because Bethany isn't quite sure how she wants to phrase what she wants to say.

"Does he still call you _witch_?" she asks.

"Yes," Merrill says. "I don't know what I'd do if he didn't."

"Does _this_ happen a lot?" Bethany asks, and lets the healing flare a little brighter so that Merrill catches what she's talking about, although what _else_ she could be talking about, she has no idea. Best to be clear, though, because sometimes understanding is hard.

"No. I don't think he likes hurting, Fenris," Merrill shakes her head, hesitating a little. "At least, I don't think he likes hurting me."

Bethany doesn't point out that it would be a little sick if he _did_ like hurting her, but refrains. Not everyone is her and Alistair, she tries to remember. And cruelty is so easy, but Merrill doesn't need it because it won't help either way.

They're friends, are Bethany and Merrill, and friends aren't cruel when they don't absolutely have to be.

It takes a while, but eventually the glass is all gone and the wounds close up, and Merrill's whole again. She takes her hands back, staring hard at the new skin. When she speaks, her voice is very small. "Thank you."

"You can't save someone who doesn't want to be saved," Bethany says. "I mean—" she sighs, again, because that advice could really be applied all over the place, to everyone Bethany has ever known, in every way. But here, especially here, in this tiny little space crammed full of books and sunlit dust, with that poisoned mirror in the corner; here, it means more. "You can stop, if you want to."

"I don't know how," Merrill says. "I don't—I don't know if I want t'know how."

It hangs in the air between them, shimmering raw like sunlight off the Waking Sea. There are some things no one can take back, and truth is one of them. Merrill stares at her hands again, little run-off sparks of mana crackling intermittedly blood magic red and Keeper green, never staying one colour for long. And while Merrill stares at her hands, Bethany stares at Merrill, and finds that the longer she looks, the more she finds little hurts that draw things closer: nails bitten down to quick, dark smudges beneath the eyes, the blue-violet bloom on her friend's throat shaped like a kiss.

(The honesty of it nearly breaks them both.)

Bethany reaches across the space between them to wrap her arms around Merrill's neck and then they're just sort of clinging to one another, two mage girls who have so many things in common except for sense and for the things that they want. But they share a love of books and sunshine and early mornings out on the Wounded Coast, making flower crowns and drawing pictures in the sand. It used to be easier before the twins were born, because they had more time, but—

It's growing up, that's all. Wrong and difficult and hard.

But good, too, when it's done right.

"D'you have any tea?" Bethany asks, after they've both stopped sniffling.

"No, the rats got into the larder again and ran off with everything," Merrill says, rubbing at her red eyes. "They're clever beasts, they almost deserve it—"

" _Rats_ , Merrill," Bethany says, a little bit hysteric, a little bit wet, "should not be in your larder!"

"Where _else_ are they supposed t'be?" Merrill asks, mystified.

"Outside, where they belong," Bethany shakes her head, dusting herself off as she rises. Only Merrill would think that rats deserved to be in the larder if they could figure out how to get in, in the first place. "Come on, Mother will want to see you, we can get biscuits and tea on the way home. And maybe we can get your larder some wards to keep the rats out?"

"I really don't see what's so wrong with rats—?!"

—

Merrill and Bethany spend the afternoon with Bethany's mother, the former being rather magnificently fussed at and the latter finding great amusement in it. They sit in Leandra's solar, the sun streaming in through the windows, and they don't talk about broken glass or blood magic or boys at all.

(They do talk about the rats, though, and Mother is so delicately revolted by the notion that it's almost comical.)

Orana brings tea and perfectly square-cut little sandwiches, and smiles so shyly when Mother asks her to sit down and join them. It's the little courtesies that she's still getting used to, the freedom to go and do and _be_ as an accepted fact of life and not just a notion for humans. Bethany thinks that her sister's done a lot of terrible things, but giving Orana the chance to figure out how to stand on her own feet was one of the better ones. Giving her the safe space to do it, that was good, too.

Having another friend never goes amiss, either, Bethany thinks.

And then Alistair comes home because he's always coming home, these days, and Bethany leaves her mother lecturing at Merrill and Orana both for never eating enough to go curl into the comforting cave of her husband's chest.

"Hello there," Alistair says, grinning tiredly as he loops his arms around her. He's solid as steel, already out of the armour because he can't stand wearing it for longer than he absolutely has to. "Someone's pleased to see me."

"Aren't I always?" Bethany asks, smiling up at him soft as eiderdown. "How was your day?"

"It was alright," Alistair murmurs, as he runs his hands through her curls to calm himself down. It clearly wasn't alright, because he only does this when he's had bad day, and something awful has happened in the Gallows; the irony, of course, is that most days now, Alistair comes home and touches her all over like he'll never be able to do it enough. "There was a Harrowing."

Oh, Andraste.

Bethany swallows hard. She hates hearing about the Harrowings, but an old fascination sinks tenterhooks into her throat. She used to wonder what a Harrowing was like. She used to wonder if she'd ever have to have one. "What happened?"

"He was fine, he made it through, we didn't have to—" Alistair breaks off, closes his eyes. "I hate it, Beth. No one should have to go through what we put them through."

"I know you do," she murmurs back, wishing she could wipe away the sadness like she wipes away exhaustion. Magic can only go so far, and there are some hurts as can't be healed. This is one of them. "I know."

Alistair shudders, and pulls her closer than close, 'til they're more one person than two. If only they could be like this always; it's safer, or at least it feels like it. Bethany kisses his ear a little helplessly.

A long time later, the shaking of his shoulders finally stops.

"Alright?" Bethany asks him.

"Alright," Alistair says, and presses his mouth to her hair.

"Oh, that's just precious," Marian's voice comes mocking through the air, teeth flashing white. She's standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, the dragonscale-sharp claws of her gauntlets glinting. She's a lean arc of leather and metal and violent crimson death, eyes freezing cold and brilliantly blue in her face. "Don't let me interrupt, lovebirds, you're just _darling_. It's just that Mal's crying, and I need to borrow our templar for a bit. Do you mind, Bethy?"

Bethany and Alistair blink at one another.

Oh, Maker, why is her sister _like_ this?

"You didn't think to bring him down?" Bethany says.

"No. That seemed like work. And, well—" Marian pauses, and again flashes her teeth, a little wild, a little vicious, "—I'm not very good with children, as we've discovered! Anyway, your templar. Can I borrow him or not?"

"I'm right here," says Alistair mildly, before Bethany can say anything else. He hooks his chin over her shoulder, and suddenly they could be young again, just stumbling off the boat into the Gallows' docks. It feels just like that, just like that entire. "I do have a name."

"I'm aware," Marian says. "But you _are_ Bethy's templar, or has that changed since the last time you answered to it?"

Marian is very hard to argue with, sometimes.

But she hasn't called Alistair _Bethy's templar_ in a very long time. Not to his face, anyway. There's something about it that catches and _stretches_ , prickling along the back of Bethany's neck, and she remembers that her sister had had something she'd wanted to tell Alistair after Chateau Haine. Something important enough that Marian hadn't been willing to tell Beth first, or at least not without Alistair there to hear it, too.

Bethany knows just from the look on her sister's face that Marian's decided she's going to be bothersome until she gets what she wants.

And so Bethany slips out of Alistair's arms, her fingers lingering at the crook of his elbow for long moments instead of an apology. She doesn't ask if he's going to be alright, or even if he's in the mood to try to survive whatever it is Marian thinks he to know.

If he's not alright, or if he doesn't survive it, Bethany will put him back together.

It's what they do, after all.

Malcolm isn't crying, either.

"I don't know what I'm going to do about your aunt, she makes everyone's lives so difficult," Bethany tells her son, reaching into his bassinet to pick him up for a cuddle. "Yes, that means you, too."

"Buh," he says. He looks more like Bethany's father than anyone else in the family; the same wild dark hair, the same wild dark eyes. Bethany's listened to her mother murmur at Mal through the door before, humming the old Chasind lullabies that Father used to sing, _marrow and blood, frost and flood, over a labyrinth of bone_ —

Bethany had thought she'd forgotten them, but clearly not.

She stays there for a while, rocking Mal to and fro until he slips back into the sleep that she'd so rudely disturbed. The nursery is scattered over with clothes and toys, the detritus of Carina and Liana's ability to make a phenomenal mess of any room they're allowed into. Bethany starts to clean up, finds Dog buried and snoozing underneath a pile of blankets, and has to leave so she doesn't burst into laughter and wake Mal all over again.

The hallway is quiet when she closes the door behind her, the giggle-snort trapped in her throat finally escaping and twinkling through the still air. It brightens the whole Amell estate, a glowing little bubble of sound, and then it fades away.

(Andraste, half a decade gone by and Dog's _still_ the silliest creature she's ever known.)

Bethany slumps back against the wall, staring up at the ceiling for a long minute. There's the faint echo of voices, and the _slam_ of a door rattling in its hinges.

Marian's probably done terrorizing Alistair, by now.

Or at least, Bethany _hopes_ Marian's done terrorizing Alistair.

And if she's not, having tea ready for after Marian's done is probably not a terrible idea. A good cup of tea never hurt anyone, especially not Alistair. Bethany straightens up, spine _popping_ with the movement, and slips downstairs into the kitchen to put the kettle on.

It's her favourite place, this kitchen.

The way light slants in through the window to catch on the little glass jars along the windowsill, full of dark sweet purple jam from the blackberries that grow wild along the rocky beaches and pale green seedling herbs in turn. The slow drip of water at the bottom of the wash basin, the dishes drying in their stand, soap suds and leftover lye on a porcelain dish. The icebox in the corner—Bethany pauses to flick her fingers at the ice rune inscribed there; it's looking a bit parched for mana and Sandal always gets so upset when his enchantment-workings go unappreciated—and the cupboards, solid and golden-wooden and still holding the ancient writing slate that Mother likes to use to remind everyone of all the things that still need to get done. The chopping block, the knives, the hearth, all clean and quiet and still as the Wounded Coast after a storm.

From behind her, there's a _click_ like a door opening then closing.

"Oh," someone says, low and quiet and fond. " _There_ you are."

The kettle begins to steam.

Alistair wraps his arms around Bethany's waist, props his chin on top of her head. There's a certain old comfort to it, the way they both unconsciously move to make space for one another, the simple assurance that _after everything, we're still here, aren't we_. Beth leans back against him, so very tired all of a sudden. The sky outside is set aglow, watercolour pastels slowly smudging into darker shades above the Waking Sea glittering a dragon's hoard, stretched out far as the reach of the horizon. Even the Twins doesn't look so desolate in this light, their massive bronze chains glinting copper fire instead of blood-sick nightmares. Kirkwall washes clean in sunset and saltwater, and Bethany breathes out.

"There's a dragon in the Bone Pit," Alistair says without preamble.

"Really? Again?"

"This one's full-grown," he sighs, and she can feel him shake his head everywhere, twined up together like this. All his muscles expand and contract, warm skin, solid bone. "That place is cursed."

Bethany twists around in the circle of his arms to press her mouth to the line of his jaw. She can already imagine her sister coming home stinking of smoke and dragon-fire, wild-eyed and laughing; that's precisely Marian's cup of tea, because living through things that would kill a sane person is Bethany's sister's favourite pastime.

But she wouldn't have needed to borrow anyone for that.

Not when Alistair's _still here_.

"So, are you going to tell me what Marian actually wanted?" Bethany asks his chest. She feels like she's always asking him questions that have answers she doesn't really want to hear, trying to keep up; first the templars, now this. It's always something, isn't it. "She didn't need to get rid of me for dragons, and we both know it."

Alistair looks down at her, brow furrowed, and carefully brushes her curls away from her face. It's very quiet; early enough in the evening that Marian's left for the Hanged Man, but late enough that the rest of the household has gone to bed. The jitters from the day have faded, even, left them both wrung out and ready for the comedown.

It was such a long day.

"Beth, love, do you—" Alistair stops, chewing on the words, tries again, "—do you remember, in Lothering, just before we left, I—I told you something that I haven't really—it was about—Maker, I can't, it was about—"

"Why you grew up the way you did," Bethany supplies for him, a skein of hurt running through her at the way he nods, relieved at not having had to say it. She won't call it _family_ , because _family_ is not being left in the Chantry to grow up alone. Hatred is such an ugly emotion, but Bethany thinks she hates King Maric for doing this to him. For leaving him like this. It is a wasteland inside of her, Lothering dry and cracked and bursting at the seams. "Yes, I do."

"I—it's just rumours," Alistair says, very quietly. He exhales shakily, tucking himself a little closer around her.

"What rumours?" Bethany asks, tilting her head back so she can look at him properly.

"The kind where I might not be the only Theirin idiot in the world," Alistair says, smile flickering like a candle in the wind. "Apparently, fathering bastards runs in the family."

Once upon a time, when Bethany was younger and still believed that the world wasn't entirely unfair, she had put her hands very carefully on Alistair's face and whispered _the only family that matters is the one you make yourself_. And maybe he'd believed her, because they went on and built something together, forging forwards when there had been nothing left behind them but ashes and a Blighted land. A dragon, a ship, an endless starry sky: they made each other someplace safe, and that was all that mattered.

But it's not all that mattered, because here a dead family rises ugly to bare its shining teeth.

There are some histories that can't be ignored.

Bethany drops her head to press against the sharp jut of his collarbone, the safety of his skin slipping beneath her musculature like warm water, and they just stand there swaying back and forth. There's something a little desperate to the cling of it, but there's always been something a little desperate in the way they touch one another, so brightly burning that it would hurt if it wasn't also so sweet. Her heart throbs in her chest, and she has to wonder what Alistair's heart is doing. She can feel the beating, but that doesn't mean it's whole: a cracked and bleeding thing still lives, after all. Can still be kind.

Maker, Bethany just wants to keep him safe.

"Do you want to do anything about it?" she asks him.

"I don't know," Alistair says, like a confession. She can hear the way his throat sticks around it, and has the strangest urge to wash the world away so that it won't be able to hurt him anymore. "I don't know if it's even true. If it is, I… might have a nephew."

But they both know very well that Marian wouldn't have said it if there wasn't some truth to it.

(Bethany's sister is cruel, but not even she would be _this_ cruel.)

"Did she say anything else? Or just that she'd heard that there was…?"

"No, nothing else," he says, hands skittering nervous up and down her frame. "I'm—I don't know, Beth, it's—I'm not—"

"You don't have to be," Bethany tells him, as gently as she can.

And Alistair crumples into her, and doesn't say anything for a very long time. Growing up is such a hard thing, because there's no roadmap. No direction. All they've got is one another, stumbling through the dark with their hands entwined. And sometimes that's not a terrible thing, but it is the blind leading the blind: there's no guarantee that they're going to get where they need to go in a timely fashion, if they even get there at all. Bethany cups her palm around the back of his neck, and thinks, oddly, about how once he'd had a hole in the neckline of his shirt, and now it's not there anymore.

The sun begins to sink beyond the horizon.

Kirkwall always does seem to see them at their worst when the day ends.

"Maybe it's a good thing we didn't go," Bethany laughs a tremulous sound that isn't really a laugh at all, but it makes the hollow death in Alistair's eyes leaven a little. "I wanted to, but can you imagine how it would have gone if we had?"

"Bann Teagan was there, so probably not well," he says, and at Bethany's questioning look, murmurs, "My uncle. Well, sort of. The King's uncle."

"Oh, Alistair, that's—" she starts, but Alistair shakes his head.

"No, love, it's alright," he says, and pulls back to look down at her with such fond eyes, absently tucking a mad stray curl behind her ear. There's the weight of the years between them in the regard, old kindness blooming a golden hymn of dry grass and baking heat, salt and sugar and ash.

(Oh, _home_.)

Alistair brushes his knuckles against her cheek. It brings her back.

"I love you," he says. The golden sunset in through the kitchen window makes him glow. "I know I don't say it enough, but I do. I love you, and I'm glad we're here, Beth. There's nowhere else I'd want to be."

In that moment, Bethany thinks about it means to love. She thinks of Merrill, fire and blood in her palms, whispering _I don't know how_ , and she thinks of Solona, emotions shuttered behind her porcelain face. She thinks of Marian, carrying the wound of Isabela's absence like something hard-won, a trophy as visible as her scar is wide. Bethany looks at up at Alistair in the twilit kitchen, purple and gold and arterial crimson streaking out wild over his face. She wants to kiss the tips of his fingers. She wants to kiss him everywhere.

"I know," she murmurs. "I love you, too."

—

.

.

.

.

.

_tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> notes: i'm uh. super anti-amell/cullen, just so we're all aware.  
> notes2: also like, solona is _supremely gay_ , so that's a thing.  
> notes3: _heartlines_ — embrz ft. meadowlark.


	7. set the whole city on fire

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _amused_ — h u n g e r.

—

.

.

.

.

.

Isabela comes home, and Bethany's sister gets better.

(Or as better as Marian ever gets, anyway.)

There's a distance, at first; Bethany doesn't find Isabela lounging mostly undressed around the estate the way she used to be prone to doing, and when she does, there's a kind of half-hungry-half-longing reverence in her face directed at Marian but only when Marian isn't looking. And there's pain in it, real pain, sharp-edged and bleeding on the inside, but it's the kind of pain that's ruthlessly choked off, pushed down, breathed out slowly through the lungs.

But just like the breathing out slow, time seems to… help. Malcolm starts to walk, and Mother's going outside again, and Bethany finds herself at the center of a mad little menagerie with Alistair's arm warm around her waist.

It is the most hopeful she's been in a very, very long time.

And it doesn't last.

"I hate doing templar dirty work," Marian says, darkly, one day after she's come home from whatever it is Bethany's sister spends her days doing.

"What?" Bethany asks, looking up from where she's trying, very valiantly, to get Mal to stop spitting out his food. Her son is burbling laughter, and there are mashed peas absolutely everywhere. Afternoon sun bleeds in through the windows, and Bethany pushes a stray curl out of her eyes. "What templar dirty work?"

"The kind the Knight-Commander seems to think she can get away with," Marian says. "Hunting blood mages. But she really ought to know better than to threaten me, it never works out well for anyone."

"Except you," Bethany says.

"Except me," Marian echoes, smiling unkindly with all her teeth.

Bethany shakes her head, and goes back to trying to get more mashed peas into Mal's mouth than on his face. It's not a winning battle and she should probably just give up, but—well, who  _else_  is going to feed him?

"Do you want to come with me?"

"You know how I feel about blood magic," Bethany says. She keeps her eyes down, spoons some mashed green off of Mal's cheeks. Thinks about the twins, playing outside with Mother and Solona. Thinks about Alistair, his shadows and his shaking hands. Feels the chasm in her heart. "And doing the templar's dirty work."

"Mmm," her sister hums. But Marian's sketching something invisible out on the table, mountain peaks or Hightown's towers or ship sails or maybe all three, and the pull of her mouth is a bitter one. "One of them is from Ferelden."

"What?"

"One of the mages that our dear Knight-Commander wants me to find. She's Ferelden. Evelina. I thought you might have an idea where to start?"

"There are a lot of Ferelden mages," Bethany says, unwilling. Lirene has a list, though to anyone else, it looks like a purchase ledger. It's nearly been a decade, but nothing is getting better. Even with the mine; there's work, and fewer starve, but it's a close thing. "Me, for starters."

"You don't count," says Marian.

"Why do you always do this?" Bethany asks her, tired down to her bones.

(Already she's thinking about how in the Maker's name she's going to convince Orana not to spoil the children to bits while she's out. The sun comes through the window in bitter slats of orange light, dripping with melancholy. Kirkwall, that poisoned thing.)

"You didn't answer the question, Bethy," Marian says.

"Darktown," Bethany expels a great sigh. It's not easy for a mage to hide in the City of Chains, but of all the places, the dark places below the sewers are probably the safest. No one who has any other choice goes down there, not even the templars. "It's—try Darktown, first."

"That's my girl," Marian says, grins another flash of teeth. "So, you're coming, then? Bela's already said she will. It'll be fun!"

It will not be fun. These things never are.

But—

"I—yes, if I must," Bethany sighs.

"Good," and here, here is when Bethany sees the shift. It's not a tangible thing, not something that she knows how to grab a hold of and name. But it's the way her sister holds her head, throws her shoulders back, straightens her spine as her eyes gleam like sunlight off of ice. It's the click of her nails against the table. It's all the things sharp and nightmarish, the purple and the black and the blue. Marian Hawke melts away, and all of a sudden, there's someone else in Bethany's sister's smile. From sibling to saviour, in the blink of an eye.

"Find your templar, Bethy," the Champion of Kirkwall says. "We have work to do.

—

Darktown. Palace of murder, mayhem, and every dirty deal not meant for the Maker's eyes. Darktown, dripping walls, dripping noses, dripping blood onto a sewer grate. Darktown, neither Carta nor Coterie, neither sane nor sanitary, neither up nor down. There's nothing here but the end of all life. Not even demons. Not even templars.

(But before they go to muck about in Darktown, there is the Hanged Man _:_

" _You poor sod," Marian says, folding her arms over her chest, after the din of the Hanged Man's communal greeting has died down and the bar's patrons have gone back to their own business. "I don't think you could magic a girl into bed with you if you tried."_

_Emile de Launcet moans into the table's sticky surface. "I just want—"_

" _Yes, I know what you want, dear. Shush, I'm thinking," Marian says. She eyes him, glances over her shoulder to eye Bethany—seems to decide, rather promptly, that that would be a terrible idea, not to mention there's Alistair raising his eyebrows over Beth's shoulder—then flicks her gaze to Isabela laughing at something Corff's said at the bar. Marian's gaze turns soft for a long moment, just the tiniest thaw._

" _He's almost too pathetic to turn over to the templars, Hawke," Varric says sagely. "I mean… look at that bald spot. That's just sad. It's not right."_

" _You make a good point," Marian says. She turns to Emile, says, "He makes a good point."_

_Emile has no counter to this. He moans into the table a second time._

_But he won't last another day in the Gallows if the templars think him maleficar. Bethany swallows the lump in her throat, but she knows that she doesn't need to say this aloud. Her sister knows better than anyone what the Gallows are like. Alistair's gauntleted palm curls at her elbow._

_Marian sighs theatrically, already reaching out to yank the man away from the table. "Right, up you get. We're going to get you a girl, mate, and maybe a hat—"_ )

Bethany holds her stave a little tighter. It makes her sick to her stomach, does Darktown; the air down here is rancid, some unholy mix of rotting meat and excrement, but none of the comfort of sea salt and molten metal in the foundry district. There's just too many people down here, and none of them have done anything half so terrible as to deserve it.

The little ones, though, are the worst.

It's in the eyes, hollow and dark with hunger and hopelessness. Lothering blooms around them: refugee tents, the acrid stink of fear, the white film over the eyes from the Taint. All the reasons they'd run. All the reasons that maybe they should have stayed.

Bethany goes tense and nearly backs herself into Alistair's chest, just for the sudden reminder of it. This is Darktown, and while it may not be the blood-soaked mud of the foundries, it's still a bad place.

"Are you okay?" Alistair says into her ear. His hand settles on her hip like gravity.

"No," Bethany whispers in reply, because she's not okay. None of this is  _okay_.

"Me, neither," he murmurs. He scans the dark-lit dripping hallway with a hard set to his mouth, like he can't believe they're really down here again. He shakes his head. "Stay close."

"That was the plan," she says. They both try for a smile.

(It helps, somehow.)

"Children, we are here for a reason," Marian calls back to them. She crooks an eyebrow so high it would be visible half a league away. In the background, Varric snorts laughter. "I don't see how this is at all romantic, there's mould on the walls, it's very—"

" _Hawke_!"

Marian's eyebrow just crooks higher. "That is my name, yes. Maker, if you two  _must_  flirt, keep it away from prying eyes?"

 _Or at least for when we're not about to descend into a nest of blood mages_ , her sister doesn't say, but it rings true enough. Alistair keeps his hand at Bethany's hip for just a moment longer, a frisson of cool that sends a shiver up her spine like a droplet of clear water.

Bethany thinks of Carina and Liana and Malcolm, the three of them secure at home with Mother behind Hightown's solid white stone and Solona's healing hands and Neria's carefree fadewalk. The runes carved into the walls, the spellwork over the windows; it's a wonder the templars haven't raided the place, but nothing can get to her babies, even while the rest of the family tromps through Darktown like they have any business here.

They do have business here, of course.

(Bethany's sister has made quite sure of that.)

And already Marian's turned back to the task at hand, the slick of torchlight off her shoulders like a gleam of memory, gone and forgotten everything behind her. Bethany looks up at Alistair, finds him hovering, finds him staring right back.

"C'mon, Beth," he says, mouth pulling up a little wry. "It's going to be alright."

"I guess," Bethany murmurs.

But in a crystal kind of shining moment, she reaches down and takes his hand.

And from there it's the blind leading the blind, Bethany tucked behind Alistair behind the mad procession of Marian's friends. For all that they're quiet, for now, there's a humming lethal edge to the way they all move. Blood magic, it's always the blood magic. Even Anders. Even Merrill. None of them wants to be doing the templars dirty work, much less hunting

Darktown opens, that hungry gaping maw, and swallows them whole.

Bethany  _breathes_ —

"Evelina? Nah, haven't seen her in weeks," says Tomwise, leaning lightly over the bench. The tips of the elf's fingers are faintly green, like he's been mixing his powders again. He grows the stuff himself, he says, though Bethany has no idea how anything grows without sunlight. Or, for that matter, what kind of deal he's worked out with the Coterie to keep from being run off. Supply and demand, maybe. "Haven't seen her boys, either."

"Her boys?" Marian flutters her lashes. "Care to share with the rest of the class?"

"Make it worth my while, Hawke," Tomwise grins.

The Champion of Kirkwall laughs, a clear sound that bounces through Darktown, rattling up to the roof, loud enough to shake up Lowtown. With a flash of teeth she bends, palms laid flat on the counter, to whisper something into Tomwise's ear. There's a rapid and weird vacillation of emotion across his face—surprise, fury, something that looks a little like disgust—but he comes out smirking. If there's one thing Bethany's learned from the long violent years in Kirkwall (and from her sister, and from her friends, and from—Maker, from everyone and everything), it's that sometimes information is worth far, far more than gold.

The templar patrol roster, for instance. Bethany can imagine that a fair few apostates would pay good money, for that. She has Alistair, but not everyone has an Alistair.

"Orphans," Tomwise says, shaking his head. "A bunch of 'em. Word is, they're edging in on Coterie territory. Better hurry, Hawke, you know how the Coterie is about refugee beggars on their property."

"Excellent. Thanks, Tomwise, I owe you one," says Marian. She glances over her shoulder at Bethany and the others. "Right, you lot, you heard him. Let's find them before our resident thieves' guild decides we've worn out our welcome, shall we?"

Anywhere else, that would be marching orders.

But Darktown's twisting labyrinth keeps them all packed in close together, tight as sardines in a tin. They can't fan out, so they don't. Instead they stay in line, and Bethany's sister leads them deep into the sick-bloated belly of the Undercity.

And Evelina's boys aren't hard to find.

Fereldens are an honest folk, after all.

The children are scattered around the edges of the dark hovel, all hollow staring eyes and empty hands. They sort of hover in groups of two and three, ratty clothing eaten through with holes.

Bethany's heart turns over in her chest.

No one should have to live like this, especially not children.

"Mari—" Bethany starts.

"Hush," her sister says. She's looking at this, too, this horrible dark place where no light touches the ground, and something seems to solidify in her bones. Marian's face softens, goes gentle, and she looks, for the first time in a very long time, like she's human again.

"You can tell us, you know," the Champion of Kirkwall says. "It won't hurt."

"I don't—we don't know where she is," the boy says, but the bad shake to his shoulders is an awful tell. He looks like he's maybe fourteen summers, ragged nails and dirty brown-red hair, and though it could be more than that, it probably isn't; the lack of food and sun will have done their part to keep him small. His voice trembles. "Please, mum, we don't—Cricket, where are you—oi, get back here—!"

"Well, that's something, isn't it, Tomwise wasn't lying. I suppose I really  _do_  owe him one," Marian murmurs, as the boy shuffles his weight a little back and forth before he takes off after his brother, dashing out of sight past a sewer grate and into Darktown's gloomy depths.

"Mari—" Bethany starts again, but her sister just shakes her head.

"I know," Marian says. The  _snick_  of unsheathing daggers echoes off the dripping walls. "Come on, then, down we go!"

And so they go, down and down and down into the ash and the rust where the light's been so smothered even the air is cold. Memory rolls over Bethany like a wave, because she's been here before; this is not her first run through the sewers, and it will not be the last, and always, always it's to save someone who can't save themselves.

Bethany thinks of Ketojan, crackling with light and lips sewn shut.

Bethany thinks that if the Chantry could muzzle their mages like that, they would.

(The bitter irony of the thing: in the end, the Qun and the Chant of Light aren't really all that different. If only they could see that. If only everyone could see that.)

But there is no mourning an abomination.

And the price of blood magic is so, so, so high.

After the adrenaline of the fight has drained away and the last  _crackle-pop!_  of magic has faded from the air, Bethany slumps against her staff and closes her eyes. There's a grim line to her sister's mouth that got only grimmer in the progression of the fight, and now it burns with an edge of cold that Bethany doesn't want to look at. It's all those sharp edges, all those sharp panics, and Maker's breath, she's just too  _tired_  for it.

What Bethany wants, more than anything, is to go home and crawl into bed with Alistair and perhaps stop feeling so awful for a little bit.

It doesn't seem like a lot to ask.

Alistair must see the exhaustion on her face, because he steps between her and the rest of the room, effectively cutting off the face-off between her sister and the

"Hey," he says. He fills up the entire world, and she is so, so grateful for it. Bethany has no idea what she would do without him. Even the thought of it makes her stomach twist. "Hey, look at me. It's alright, Beth, I'm right here."

"Alistair, they're just children," Bethany whispers. The dark curls around her like a lover, and she can't—she can't just  _leave_  them here. Whatever mother they had is gone, has maybe been gone for a long time. They're alone. And they're all—Maker, it's Lothering's refugee tents all over again. The same hollow-point eyes, the same hungry mouths. She can't leave them here, not when—not  _when_ —

"I know, love," Alistair says, and maybe he's a little more aware of their surroundings than she is right now. He closes his eyes for a little longer than a standard blink. "We don't have the space."

"No, we don't," she says.

(Never mind that they're still trying to figure out how to be parents to their  _own_  children. Neither Bethany nor Alistair really has any business trying to be parents at a bunch of orphans; orphans probably need stability, and there's still far too much mayhem in their lives for that. It would go very badly, no matter how you look at it.)

"Bethy, Bethy's templar, we're leaving. Are you joining us, or do you two—" Marian breaks off to wave her hand in their general direction, "— _need_  a minute? I still don't see how this is overly romantic, but…"

"We're coming," Bethany calls in reply. She doesn't bother to get after Marian about using Alistair's name; that's always been a losing fight. She looks up at Alistair, catches a flash of green and gold in his gaze, and her heart feels like it might explode in her chest. "Or do you want to go home, now?"

"I always want to go home when your sister is involved," Alistair says flatly.

" _You_  can tell her that, then."

"Nah," he says. His mouth twitches like he's trying to hide a smile. "C'mon, how bad could it be? We've already dealt with one blood mage today. What's another?"

(Just like magic, Bethany falls in love with him all over again.)

"Only one more," Marian says, when Bethany and Alistair rejoin them. Her eyes catch on their twined hands, and something flashes across her face. It's not unkind, but maybe it's a little sad. There's never any telling with Bethany's sister. "You don't have to come, it might be messy. There might be more blood, even!"

"No," Alistair says. He glances at Bethany. She inclines her head a fraction of an inch, and it's enough. "We will."

"Lovely," Marian says, grinning as she claps her hands. "Let's get on with it, yes?"

And so they do.

Breaking out of Darktown's rank gurgle into Lowtown's early morning may be the best thing Bethany's felt all week. She leans into Alistair's side, head against his shoulder as they both gulp down clean air. The dawn creeps over Kirkwall in pale pastel hues, pinks and creams and golds streaked out over the sky like ribbons at a fair.

Bethany pretends not to see the way her sister ducks towards the Hanged Man's dead drop.

Well, at the very least, maybe some of those children won't be going hungry tonight. Varric hates to see that kind of poverty even more than the rest of them.

"I suppose we… have t'do this, don't we," says Merrill, dragging her feet a little. She's faintly green. Bethany wonders how she does this, how she manages to—balance. Maybe that's the word.

Balance, or justification.

"You don't have to come, kitten," Isabela says.

"I do, though," Merrill says. "I do."

And so they slip down through the iron gates at every city entrance, through the market and past the slums, all the way down into the cool still quiet of the alienage. Merrill leads like someone walking through a dream, neither here nor there, and they all follow her in the depths of the city's brine and bone.

The eyes of the alienage don't pay them any mind.

"Nyssa," says Merrill, and her voice is so painfully gentle, so painfully sad. "We've come for Huon."

Nyssa is a slim elven woman with mouse-brown hair and wide-set eyes the colour of a winter storm. She looks between Merrill and Marian, and then to the rest of them. She stares at Alistair's armour, takes a sharp little breath in that sounds suspiciously like a sob. Like she knows. Like she was expecting this.

"Oh," says Nyssa. She takes in another shuddering breath, and Bethany—Bethany  _understands_. "Well, you should—you should probably come in, then."

—

"We're going for a drink," Marian announces. "Right now, no excuses, yes, that means you and Alistair, and yes, that  _does_  mean right this instant."

"We have children?" Bethany says, sort of helplessly. You can't just go gallivanting off to drink with your friends when you have children; your children  _are_  your priority. Alistair nods emphatically at her side.

"Yes, and we also have  _Mother_ ," her sister says patiently, flapping her hands at Bethany, already herding them towards the door. Which is surprising, given that less than a minute ago, both Bethany and Alistair were curled up on the couch, with no intention to move. But her sister has got that look on her face like she's not going to take no for an answer, and Bethany struggles.

"What does that have to do with anything? Ow, Mari, stop!"

Marian freezes. "Marethari's dead."

Bethany freezes, too. " _What_?"

"You heard me."

"No, that's not—oh, Merrill's going to be a mess, Andraste, no, what happened?" Bethany asks, even as she already has a very good idea of what happened. Blood magic, and demons, and the tolls they demand; she'd always known it was going to be high.

"That stupid mirror happened," Marian says tightly. Her gauntlets go loose around Bethany's wrists, and there's suddenly an endless misery to her face, her raw heart in her eyes. "I don't know how to fix it, Bethy. Help me fix it."

And a raw heart is such a heavy burden.

"Yes, alright," Bethany says, because what else is there?

Nothing's been the same with Merrill since Nyssa and Huon, and maybe they all should have expected this. Merrill's been too quiet, too withdrawn; been spending far too much time with that cursed mirror. Not even Marian's been able to draw her out of it, and now—

Well, now they're here.

"Aren't we too old to go drinking?" Alistair says into Bethany's ear. "Yoou think she'd be happier with some tea…"

"We are  _never_  too old to go drinking," says Marian, offended, hand over her heart. "I'm telling Corff, he's going to be so insulted. Too  _old_  to go drinking. Maker, who  _are_  you?"

It is not an appropriate time to be giggling. A woman is dead, and Bethany's closest friend is hurting too much to breathe. But—well, too old to go drinking. And children. And Alistair! Alistair is ridiculous, he's always been ridiculous, he doesn't know how  _not_  to be ridiculous.

Bethany hides her face in Alistair's shoulder, and giggles.

"Good," Marian says, "keep that up, we'll need it."

Bethany pulls back to look her sister full in the face. "She's doing terribly, isn't she?"

"Worse," the Champion of Kirkwall says. Her eyes are like ice. "You'll see."

(And so they do.)

Merrill's drunk.

Merrill's drunk and giggling and entirely too out of it to stand. Half the Hanged Man is eyeing her; even Corff's looking a bit like he ought to cut her off, and that's saying something, as Corff has not yet ever cut someone off, even when they're past stumbling as straight into blind. She waves brightly at Bethany and Alistair as they walk in the doors. Aveline and Varric sit on either of her sides, glowering around at the other patrons.

"Oh, look, Hawke brought Bethany! Hi, Bethany! Hi! Did you bring the twins? Oh, no, of course you didn't, they're too little t'drink—" Merrill gulps down more ale. "Even though—even though—Hawke, can I have s'more?"

"Hello, Merrill. Get us a barrel, Corff," Marian says. Sighs. "It looks like we're all drinking, tonight."

Ale flows like water when the Champion's coin is on the table.

Isabela's dealing cards, slow and steady in the Hanged Man's low light. When Marian goes to pour her a drink, she covers the top of her pint. "Not for me, sweetness. Someone needs to keep Kitten on her feet."

"I'm sitting down?" says Merrill, a little tippily. "Should I—should I not be?"

"You're fine, Daisy," Varric says, kind. "But maybe don't drink so much."

Bethany's slid into the crack between Aveline and Merrill's shoulders, installed herself there because while her sister leads the room in another raucous chorus of the charming  _There's a Hole in My Tankard_ , Isabela's right. Someone does need to keep Merrill on her feet, and beneath the frothy alcoholic veneer, there's a real chance that if the Dalish girl slips away now, she'll slip away for good.

"How are you?" Bethany asks her.

"Terrible," Merrill smiles beatifically, a brilliant starshine smile that splits her entire face into something young and sweet. "And drunk! Did y'know that mead's wonderful? Mead's  _wonderful_ , I should—I should have s'more—"

A surreptitious little push of force magic moves Merrill's tankard just out of reach. No one's watching Bethany's hands, and the entire Hanged Man is far too deep into their cups to notice the tiny golden glimmer of the magic around her fingers. It's not exactly safe, but right now it's a risk that Bethany is willing to take.

(She might be the Champion's sister, but there are still plenty of people who'd enjoy watching her family shatter, Ser Alistair and all.)

Merrill really shouldn't have any more to drink.

Frankly, it's half a miracle that she hasn't fallen over already.

Bethany will never be sure how it is that they manage to convince Merrill that she's had enough to drink for one lifetime. It might involve blood magic, and Fenris glowering horribly, and Marian doing that thing she does with her face when she doesn't like how a particular situation is turning out. It might involve Varric and Aveline, hands gentle as they herd Merrill up and away from the noise. It might involve Marian herself downing far too much mead, because if there's nothing left to drink, there's nothing left for Merrill to drink, either. It might involve Anders and Neria and Solona, all three of them with furrowed brows and magic in their palms as they duck in and out, flickering like sunspot afterimages. It might be Isabela. It might be Bethany.

Whatever it is, whatever it takes, they  _do_  finally get her up and out of the greasy, smoky bar and into the Hanged Man's labyrinth of back halls, grey-wood walls and flickering oiled torches for light.

It's quieter, here.

(Easier to talk about the hard things.)

"They wanted t'kill me," Merrill whispers into Bethany's shoulder, slumping against her once they're out of sight of most people.

"What?" Bethany murmurs. She pulls Merrill up, and slips them both into an empty room. The bed is unoccupied, if not clean. It's better than Bethany had hoped. She gets her friend down onto the bed, and sits down right next to her, close but not touching. "Who?"

"My clan."

"Oh, Merrill…"

"No, it's—if Hawke hadn't—if she'd not—" Merrill hiccoughs, sways a little. "They'd have killed me. I—I really think they would've, because I'm stupid and—and not careful a-and—"

"You've had too much ale," Bethany tells her softly. "They wouldn't have—"

"They would have," Merrill says, fierce. The rims of her eyes are red. "They would."

"Merrill…"

"I—maybe I should have some water," Merrill says. Her shoulders have pulled up around her ears, and she looks so very small and so very young that Bethany wants to hug her all over again. She can't imagine anyone in the world ever wanting to hurt Merrill.

"D'you want me to go get some for you?" Bethany asks.

"Yes, please," Merrill nods into Bethany's shoulder, miserable all the way down to her bones.

And so Bethany gets up from the filthy old bed, faint red peeling paint on the dingy-pale walls the only indication that this place had ever been beautiful, once. There's a clear inch of dust in the corners, and she thinks her heart might shatter into a hundred pieces if she has to leave Merrill here all alone. It reminds her too much of Gamlen's hovel in the slums, so alike that it aches in between her teeth, and leaving anyone like this makes all of Bethany's guts knot.

But better that Merrill's here and slowly sobering up than downstairs in the tavern, drinking herself to death.

"I'll be right back," Bethany says, and means it.

She catches a glimpse of Merrill of her shoulder as she leaves like this: a tiny slip of a thing, a dark smudge of hair and brilliant green-rimmed-red eyes in a stark white face. She sits so still, it's almost like praying.

But there are no gods in Kirkwall who speak, and Bethany closes the door behind her to keep the nightmares out.

She stands with the door at her back for a very long moment, breathing in and out.

"Okay," Bethany says aloud, gulping down air and trying not to cry. "Okay, Bethy, water. Let's go get some water."

Frankly, Merrill's not the only one who could do with a break. There's something in Bethany's chest that screeches at her to go back into the tavern and crawl into Alistair's lap, plaster herself against him until she can feel something again.

But Merrill needs Bethany more than Bethany needs Alistair right now, and isn't that the most terrible thing in the entire world?

When Bethany raises her head, she finds that she's not entirely alone in the hallway.

Isabela is a flash of white and brown and gold and blue, all dim and muted in the torchlight. Her knee bends, her spine cracks, and she pops her hip out with the kind of swagger that comes only from learning to walk on a rollicking sea.

She crooks an eyebrow.

Bethany crooks an eyebrow right back. It feels strange, too much like wearing her sister's face like a mask. Bethany was never meant to crook eyebrows. "Hello, Bela."

"How's Kitten doing?" Isabela asks, simple.

Beth plucks at a loose thread at her cuff. "Sobering up, I think."

"Mmm, that's good."

"Bela, what do we—what do we do? How do we make this better?"

Isabela's lips curl up, the expression in her dark eyes softening. "We should take her out shopping, tomorrow. New hats for everyone!"

Sometimes, Bethany understands why her sister is so taken with Isabela. Now is one of those times, and she moves in close to lean her head against the other woman's shoulder. There's something very comforting about having a pirate at your back, someone's who's always ready to cover your blind spots in a bar fight. And Marian needs that, Bethany knows, more than her sister likes to admit. More than  _anyone_  likes to admit.

"Don't break my sister's heart, please," Bethany says, quiet. "I don't think she'll survive it."

"If anyone isn't surviving that heartbreak, it's me, Sunshine," Isabela murmurs. She touches the scrap of red fabric tied around her arm, almost unconscious with it. "That sister of yours is something else."

It's the closest thing to a confession that Bethany's ever heard, and it's enough.

(For now, at least.)

Bethany and Isabela walk arm in arm back into the Hanged Man's din. Something's relaxed in the air; Marian's sprawled in front of the fire, conversing quietly with Fenris and a Qunari that Bethany's never seen in her life. The Champion of Kirkwall looks up, and her eyes light up when they catch on Isabela like there's suddenly no one else in the room.

 _Hopeless_ , Bethany thinks, and goes to find Alistair at the bar.

"Water, Corff?"

The barman mutters something beneath his breath that sounds distinctly like  _what kind of establishment do you think this is, missus_ , but he plunks a tankard down in front of her without too much more fuss. Bethany just stares at it for a minute, shoulders slumped. There are rings of water stains on the bartop, iron-coloured circles sunk into the wood that are nearly indistinguishable from other spills and the wear and tear of everyday life.

The Hanged Man feels like an abandoned home, bitter and too small like a cast-off skin, and she's never felt more out of place in her life.

"Is it ever going to get any easier?" Bethany asks him, too low for anyone else to hear.

"Maybe one day," Alistair says, easily. He presses his mouth to the top of her head, warm and gold as a sunrise. But as he pulls away, he arches an eyebrow at her. "Are you alright?"

"Maybe one day," Bethany echoes. She stands up to tiptoe to kiss his cheek. "I'm going to take this to Merrill. I'll see you later?"

"Come find me when you're ready to go home," he murmurs, palm curling around her hip for half a second of comfort that she's so painfully grateful for. Bethany lingers, lingers, lingers some more.

"Are you going, or not?" Alistair asks her, kind of grinning.

"I'm—"

"Sweetness," Isabela drawls from across the Hanged Man, over the dull roar of voices and the  _clunk_  of tankard against tabletop. She's perched on the table with her boots in Marian's lap, eyebrow cocked, and she doesn't have to say anything else.

"—going," Bethany sighs. She kisses Alistair's cheek again like an afterthought.

She takes the tankard of water, and heads back to Merrill's room. Isabela falls in step beside her, her boots silent on the floor, and they move through the Hanged Man like wraiths in sunlight, hardly there at all.

Bethany doesn't know what she expects.

Silence, maybe.

She doesn't expect the door to be open a crack. Isabela's hand closes over Bethany's mouth, and she holds fast to the tankard of water as something  _crashes_  inside the room; holds her back, still and sound.

"Hush," Isabela whispers in Bethany's ear. "Listen. Kitten's not alone."

"—witch, you have—"

"You were right!" Merrill cries, muffled by the door. "Is that what you wanted t'hear? That you were  _right_?! Because—because fine, you were! You were right, I've been a fool, and now—oh, Creators, why did she—?"

"Witch," the low, dark voice says, very quietly. Fenris. "Stop crying, it is unsightly."

"I'm not  _crying_!"

There's movement through the crack in the door: a dark blur of metal and skin, the bright blue-white of lyrium. Bethany inhales sharply, and she can feel the bubble of her magic at her fingertips. She knows Fenris would never hurt Merrill, she knows that, but Andraste, that doesn't stopper up the gurgling fear that threatens in her throat. The water freezes between her fingers.

"Witch," Fenris says again, strange and gentle this time. " _Stop_."

"Oh. Oh, I—Fenris, I—"

A creak of wood obscures their next words, but it's enough. Fenris is standing very close to Merrill, with his back to the door; there's nothing to see, here.

"Come on, Sunshine," Isabela whispers in Bethany's ear. She sounds—bittersweet, a pained thing tempered by softness; it's exactly how Mother sounds when she talks about Carver. Something like loss, but gentle. "Let's leave them to it. They'll figure themselves out."

—

Bethany winces as the front door slams closed.

(Well, at least all of Hightown can now relax, knowing their Champion is safe.)

"A letter came for you," comes Bodahn's voice, bouncing up to the library in echoes. "I left it on the desk."

Her sister laughs. "For me? Oh, goody! Here, let me see—"

It's Thursday. Mother says something faint from inside her room that Bethany can't quite make out. She's not listening, not really, calm as she is; she's just managed to get the twins down for a nap—though if they stay down through Marian being Marian, it'll be half a miracle—and it's rare that Bethany gets a selfish moment to herself. She doesn't  _want_  to fall into the trap of asking what's going on, because she knows that as soon as she does, her sister  _will_  flutter her eyelashes and con her into coming along. That's what her sister  _does_ , even when Bethany has less than zero desire to be a part of Hawke family shenanigans.

That letter had come from a Gallows courier, though.

Bethany swallows, dread welling in her throat.

"Yes, Mother, unfortunately I must," Marian calls in reply to whatever it is that their mother is on about, still laughing even as she's already sliding the sharp point of a knife beneath the wax seal.

The estate falls very quiet while Bethany's sister reads.

 _Don't_ , Bethany tells herself.  _Don't you dare look over the railing, Beth Hawke, I swear it_ —

"You aren't very subtle, Bethy, you might as well come down," Marian calls. She waves the letter, half-lazy with it. "Don't you want to know what kind of trouble I'm getting into?"

Bethany sighs, and looks over the railing.

"Isn't that what you have Bela for?" she asks.

"Bela is trouble I'm getting  _off_ , dearest," her sister bats her eyelashes. "Although, I suppose, I  _do_  get into her, as well—"

Bethany tries very desperately not to make a disgusted noise. There are just  _some things_  that no younger sibling ever wants to hear, and listening to her sister talk about bedding Isabela is one of them. It's like thinking about her parents kissing, and that's always terrible no matter how much she thinks she's grown up.

"Why can't you ever bother Solona? Or Nerry?" Bethany asks, exasperated. "Or—or, I don't know, Varric?"

Marian's face closes off for a second, the shutters behind her eyes going dark. It is only for a second, but a second is long enough: there are so few things that rattle Bethany's sister, but their cousin is one of them. If there is anyone in the world who makes Marian stop and think, it is Solona Amell.

It must be hard, after all, to see your own face on someone so different.

"Never mind," Bethany says, too fast, shaking her head. Her curls are everywhere. "I just—oh, let me see, what does the First Enchanter want?"

"To see me," Marian says casually. "You don't want to come, then?"

"What use would I be?"

"Well, your templar  _is_  down there today—" her sister breaks off to shrug delicately. "I thought you might want to visit him at work."

There's more to it than that, Bethany can tell. There always is. A memory flashes: Marian, tilted back on a chair with her feet on the table, picking at her nails in the golden dark of an old home before she'd somehow convinced them both to run through Darktown with a Qunari mage. It hits so hard it hurts, that memory.

Even then, the Champion of Kirkwall had hidden her interest behind a façade of careful inattention. Half a decade, and nothing has changed.

And Marian Hawke is nothing if not consistent.

Bethany lets it lie.

"Alistair said he might not be back tonight," she says, tipping her head a little. "He's on patrol."

"So, you're going to stay here and just… what,  _wait_  for him? Maker, you two are sickening," Marian says, but there's no bite to it. "Are you sure? It'll only be a little horrible."

"I'd rather not be missing when he gets back, that's all," Bethany says.

"I know," Marian actually smiles. "Keep an eye on Mother, for me?"

"You have to ask?"

"No, I suppose not," her sister says.

And just like that, Marian's attention has moved onto the next thing, or the next, or the next, and Bethany's shoulders go down in an exhale of relief. She watches her sister gather herself up, building the Champion of Kirkwall out of Marian Hawke brick by brick, knife by shining knife, until there's nothing of her sister left.

In her place, a legend walks.

The afternoon passes at a slow drip, and Marian leaves much as she'd arrived: like a hurricane, leaving a swirling wake of paper-trail floodwaters and dagger-cut debris. Mother is out in the garden with a pair of scissors, cutting flowers to put in a crystal vase and Orana with her, holding each cut flower with painful, ginger care.

Bethany thinks about Alistair and his soft mortal heart, the way he'd smiled at her this morning when she'd still been half-asleep and drowsing in the dawnlight while he got ready for the day. Templar armour, piece by piece, as he took himself away from her.

But before he left, he'd touched her hair.

Kissed her goodbye.

And the twins are napping upstairs and Malcolm is quiet in his bassinet, and this is Bethany's life now—she's a mother and a mage, not a rogue. She doesn't have the time to go gallivanting 'round Kirkwall, running after her flaming disaster of an elder sibling.

She doesn't even  _want_  to, for that matter.

The point is moot, anyway, because one quiet night isn't really a problem as far as Bethany is concerned. The sun hangs low in the sky, drooping lower all the time until twilight sets in, purple and gold streaked out across the walls. And as twilight sinks into the ink of nighttime quiet, the Hawke estate goes still and perfectly silent. There is something incredibly lonely to it, though she's sure she could go sit with Mother or Solona or Neria and not feel so empty. But—

That's the problem with being in love with someone, isn't it?

(You want them all the time.)

Bethany crawls into bed, missing Alistair so much that her teeth ache.

Sleep doesn't come easy, but it does come, eventually. She tosses and turns, and when the first crawling dawn-pale fingers of light creep in through the window she's up and out of bed, wrapping herself in a dressing coat to go wake the twins up for breakfast. Concentrate on something else, think of something else, do something else; if Bethany can just keep her hands and her mind busy long enough to make it through the day, things won't hurt so much.

Malcolm's started to walk. The twins go a mile a minute if they're allowed, Liana nothing but a long, endless stream of words and Carina nothing but a long, endless stream of pop-rock sparkles. All three of them are big dark eyes and up-turned mouths, a brilliant blend of everything Bethany has ever loved.

And if nothing else, three small children are a  _very_  good distraction.

"Carina, Liana, get  _back_  here—!"

Marian slams in through the door like something wild, a whirlwind of daggers and spiky armour, eyes blazing.

"Bethy?" she calls. "Bethany, are you in here?!"

"Mar?" Bethany pokes her head out of the kitchen, blinking owlishly. There's a sticky dollop of purple wildberry jam on her cheek. Liana shrieks  _Auntie Mari!_  from inside the kitchen, just out of sight. "Is everything alright?"

"Is everythi—are  _you_  alright?!"

"Is there a reason I… wouldn't be alright?"

"Keran—" and here, Marian pauses. She looks Bethany over, from the wildberry jam to the raucous mess of curls that always comes from trying to wrangle the twins and Malcolm all at once, and something panicky in her shoulders seems to relax as she exhales. "If that little shit was lying to me…"

"Keran?" Bethany asks. The name rings… something, an old memory flavoured Blooming Rose-purple, from before the twins were born. Before the Amell estate, even; it belongs to those early days when they'd all been so young and brash and full of fear, after Meeran but before the Deep Roads, when Bethany had spent her days helping Lirene try to keep people fed.

"Just a lead. He said something that made me think—" Marian bites off the word, vicious between her teeth, breathes so sharp in and out. "But you're fine, and Mother's fine, and the babies must be fine. Bela's been with me—"

Something  _twists_  in Bethany's stomach, something low and warning that she doesn't have a name for, but it makes her want to be sick. "Have you seen Alistair?"

"…Oh,  _sod_ ," Marian inhales. "I knew I was forgetting something."

The breath punches out of Bethany's lungs. " _Excuse_  me?  _Forgetting_  something?!"

"I knew it couldn't be Carver, going after the Wardens would just be stupid, he's surrounded on all sides," Marian mutters darkly. It sounds like she's talking to herself, more than anything else. "And Solona hardly even counts, she never leaves the estate unless she has to. Nerry would just blow anyone who tried to kidnap her up. So, there was just—that only left you and mother and the babies, I thought Alistair would be here—"

"Where is my husband, Marian?!"

"Wounded Coast," says her sister, examining her nails. There's guilt written into her shoulders. "Shall we?"

"Mummy? R'you okay?"

"I'm fine," Bethany says, voice gone soft as she looks down at her daughters. Carina and Liana are clinging to her skirt, little fingers curled into the fabric, faces turned up towards her. There is something incredibly  _visceral_  about a child's concern, Bethany reflects, because concern is such a new emotion to them. It takes up their whole world.

"You don't look okay," Liana says, brow furrowing.

"I'm alright, Lia," Bethany says again, but she kneels down to look at both her girls on their own level. "But I need to go find your father. Can you and Carina take care of Nan for me, while I'm gone?"

Liana and Carina look at one another, conferring silently for a moment in the way that twins do—something goes tight in Bethany's chest, and she thinks about Carver—before they nod simultaneously, and then turn back to look at her.

"We will," Liana says. "An' we'll look after Mal, too. We'll be good, Mummy."

"I know you will," Bethany murmurs, smiling. "You always are."

—

"You know," Marian says, leaning against the doorframe of the bedroom while Bethany gathers her stave and her armour. "You're quite good at that. The mothering thing."

"Are you surprised?" Bethany asks. The mail slides through her fingers like water. It's been a long time since she's had any reason to put it on. Andraste, that she's got a reason to put it on now burns.

"No, I can't say I am. Bethy—"

"Not right now, Mari," Bethany says. "Please."

The Hawke sisters look at each other for a very long moment. There are things, here, between them, that have no place being spoken right now. Bitter things. Angry things. Sorry things, too. Carver, and now Alistair; old wounds and new, all ripped open and infected once again. This isn't the time nor the place to salt the poison out.

Maybe later.

"Alright," says Marian, gentle. "Let's go, then."

And so they go.

Sunlight bleeds crimson over the white sand of the Wounded Coast, the pale green of the palms unfurling in little curlicue waves against the sky. Everything's all gold, and all Bethany can think of is Alistair's eyes when he smiles, exactly that same shade. Dust motes dancing, puffy white clouds; it would be a beautiful day, any other day.

Bethany's knuckles go tight around her staff.

She  _wants_  her  _husband_.

It's not a long journey out of Kirkwall down to the coastline, but it's long enough. Every step takes too much time, the far-off crash of waves the only sound. Nature's lilting music weaves through Bethany's worry, soft and soothing and not enough, never enough. She's been chewing on her lips so long that she's surprised she's not bit them clean through, and now they just hurt like the rest of her.

The morning air tastes like salt.

It burns, too.

"It's okay, sunshine," Varric says, lowly. "We're not gonna let you end up a widow just yet. He's gonna be fine, this isn't a big deal."

Bethany smiles kind of faintly, the crumpled edges of her lips pulling up just a little. Trust Varric Tethras to know precisely what to say to settle the alarms ringing inside of her. Yes, Alistair is going to be fine, and she's going to bring him home, and then she's never going to let him out of her sight ever again.

Maker take the Templar Order. She's not going to let him go back to the Gallows.

As though anyone would want to.

It's bitter, that.

Soil gives way to silt as they break out from the valleys and the hills that precede the coast, the dark verdant places melting into thin blades of sea-grass and multi-colour pebbles. Sand gives way beneath Bethany's feet. Her boots are solid and heavy, the kind of boots that a woman wears to go to war. She didn't think they were the kind of boots she would ever  _have_  to wear.

Then again, Bethany has never been the sort to go to war.

Going to war was always Marian's job.

But there's a first time for everything. And now the tight-knit pack of Bethany's sister's friends and Bethany's sister and Bethany herself round a bend in the rocky shoreline, all of them stretched still and silent in the morning light, all looking her over like she's a mad thing only barely leashed. Maybe she is; her magic aches between her teeth, beneath her skin, that sparkling blue-green pool deep inside her chest glittering with her fury. It roils inside of her, has her flexing her hands helplessly to try to shake out the energy, but Andraste, it's got an edge so  _wild_  and so  _destructive_  and Bethany—

Bethany is not prepared for what they find just around the corner.

The Wounded Coast bleeds red, and Ser Thrask has become a very old man.

There is white at his temples. This is what strikes Bethany, more than anything else; white bristles in his beard, white threads in his fringe, white hair at his temples. Ser Thrask favours his left side just a little when he moves; an old wound, maybe. There are lines around his mouth too entrenched downwards to be from smiling, and he's far too pale to be healthy. Far too slight to be wearing heavy plate as he is, as well; Maker, he's two steps from the grave. Misery hangs around him like a bride's veil, gauzy and white as the rest of him. All the colour seems to have gone from his face.

The man standing in front of them doesn't look anything at all like the man who helped sneak Bethany into Kirkwall, half a decade gone. The man standing in front of them looks very much like he knows what it is to feel so raw that a cool breeze smarts.

(Oh, grief.)

Her husband is missing.

Bethany thinks that knowing grief is not enough.

Not for this.

And so she will never know what the old templar's excuses are, nor will she ever want to. Her spine is hard as diamond, her guts slick like warm oil, and all of the sky and the sea seem to fall away into a smear of sunlight and saltwater, blue and gold. Bethany's vision skews away from her white, and nothing matters, nothing matters,  _nothing matters_  because—

Alistair is laid out on the sand, armour glinting in the sun, bound in blood magic's seething red and sickening black. Horror screeches through her and the Fade whispers:  _here, now, rend, tear, shred, force it, force it, force it to bleed until there is_ nothing _left, here now, you see, here, now_ —

(Maker on his defiled throne, but Bethany has  _really_  had enough of blood mages this lifetime.)

The Wounded Coast carries its name well. Bethany hasn't ever hurt like this in her life.

"Bethy," says Marian, very quietly. "Don't."

"Don't what?" Bethany says. It's not a question.  _Don't_ , as though it's even an option, when she's already reached out into the Fade to find the shatterpoints in the bloodspell, all the ugly pulsing places where it would only take a little pressure to snap the enchantments apart. Bethany grabs at the magic. The bonds are blood-magic strong, but she is stronger, and driven by something far more desperate than she wants to admit. Blood magic or no blood magic,  _Alistair is her husband_ , and there is no motivation quite like the pale blue shadows of his closed eyes.

It's love, that selfish thing.

And Bethany  _could_  break the blood thrall.

She just might kill the casting mage in the process.

"Just don't," Marian says again. Her gaze flickers like fruit flies against a dark-lit background, never staying in one place long enough to catch. "Let me handle this."

"Marian, if he's hurt—"

"Hush, Bethy," her sister murmurs. "It's going to be fine. When have I ever let you down?"

Carver's name burns just past Bethany's lips, sudden and vicious as acid. Her twin, let down into the dark. Her twin, and before that, Father, and even before Father, Antiva. All the years and all the things between the Hawke sisters, all the wordless miseries. Bethany stays quiet, swallows down the vitriol. There are some things that just aren't meant to be said aloud.

Marian smirks like she knows exactly what Bethany's thinking.

 _In all of her life, Bethany has never hated her sister_ —

The Champion of Kirkwall steps lightly.

— _but she might hate her now_.

"Really?" Marian says, raising skeptical eyebrows, mouth pursed down. "My sister's templar? You couldn't have picked a better victim than  _my younger sister's templar_?"

"Champion—" Ser Thrask looks startled. The sunlight bleaches white over his skin, pale as smoke.

"No, no, no," Marian cuts him off, shaking her head, and heaves a great theatrical sigh. Her fringe shadows her eyes, silver-blue and darkly amused. She jerks her chin at Alistair's prone form. "Look at him, it's like kicking a puppy! Maker, Thrask, I thought better of you, let him up."

"Champion, I—this wasn't supposed to—oh, Andraste, Grace, she's right. Let him up, this is ridiculous, we'll not—"

" _No_!" the word  _tears_  through the air. "The boy dies, and then the Champion!"

"Well, that's a bit extreme, don't you think—"

Bethany doesn't recognize the woman standing before them. She's thin to emaciation, wild pale eyes beneath wilder auburn hair, the shadow of an old tattoo inked in swirls across the left half of her face. She might have been beautiful, in her youth, or better, she might have been kind. But time and loss have stripped it away and left nothing an empty husk, running on nothing but fumes.

"No!" the tattooed woman says again. Her hands twitch at her sides, jerky and manic. Bethany thinks, abruptly, of Huon. The way he'd been moving in the alienage had been the same as this woman is moving now. Just the same. "No, I won't! This is for Decimus!"

"Grace," Ser Thrask says, sharp with warning. "Stand down."

"Oh, shut  _up_ , templar," she snaps, and her hands blur with power and motion to throw him high into the air. "He was the best man I ever knew, and she  _killed_  him!"

Bethany's sister sort of squints against the sunlight for a long time, eyes narrowed to slats of blue ice as she looks the mage called Grace over. The red haze of blood magic bubbles out around her, sucking down the slow wet rasp of Ser Thrask's breath until it stills entirely. An awful hush rings in Bethany's ears, and her throat is tight because she knows her sister, and she knows the woman that her sister becomes to be the Champion of Kirkwall, and she knows—suddenly, swiftly, she knows—that this can only end badly.

(Half hunger, half hope, all sorrow.)

Ser Thrask is dead, and there is no time to grieve.

The Champion of Kirkwall chooses her words, slow and deliberate. "Was that… supposed to convince me to care?"

 _We are all going to die_ , Bethany reflects. She thinks she hears Varric groan somewhere in the background.  _What kind of genre-bending garbage is this? Do you_ know _how many people Hawke's killed? Shit, how're we supposed to keep 'em all straight?_

"You—" Grace's face turns mottled, pickled on rage and regret. "You  _bitch_! Forget the hostage. Kill the Champion!"

"Oh, sod," Marian sighs. Her daggers shine in her palms, mirror bright. "Here we go."

It is not a long battle.

It is not a long battle at all.

But there is a savagery to it that Bethany has never known herself capable of. While her sister throws herself into the fray beneath a rain of arrows and a lashing of roots growing up from the ground, while her sister's lover laughs and disappears into smoke and mirrors to stab their foes in their backs, while her sister's friends bring magic and steel and trickery to end lives brutal and bloody, Bethany looks inside of herself, drops the barriers around her magic, and lets it run  _wild_.

She slams a templar so hard into the ground she hears his neck snap.

She grabs hold of a mage casting, and tears his arms out of his sockets.

She casts ice and fire and electricity, a cyclone of the elements that sucks in light and heat and spits out nothing but violence, and there is nothing that can stop her now, not the fury and not the wind and if a single hair on Alistair's head is hurt, Bethany will tear apart the Veil itself to bring him  _back_ —

The sun breaks over the mountains at high noon, flooding the ruins with brilliant light, and Bethany reaches Alistair just as Marian ends Grace's life.

The blood bonds vanish.

"Alistair?" she tries. "Alistair, wake up."

She shakes him a little. Banishes the magic, still lingering.

(It's strange, how still a person can be when they shouldn't.)

"Alistair, I swear to the maker, if you don't—you can't leave me like this, I'll never—oh. Hi," Bethany's voice drops to a whisper.

"Hi," Alistair whispers back. His voice comes scratchy, like he hasn't spoken in a hundred years. She touches his throat with healing fingers. "It's good to see you."

"You, too," she says. "I—"

" _Ow_ ," he coughs.

"This is—are you alright? We are really terrible at this not-getting-kidnapped thing, aren't we," she says, laughs, weird and wet. "Hi, Andraste, hi, I'm really glad you're still alive."

"Oh, I dunno, we could be—" Alistair breaks off, manages to reach up and brush at her cheeks. The metal of his gauntlets is cold against her skin. "Aw, Beth, love, don't cry."

"I'm not—" and she realizes that oh, yes, she  _is_  crying, isn't she. Bethany swipes furiously at her eyes. Now isn't really the time to be crying. She's not the one hurt, and Alistair still seems to be having trouble moving.

"You are crying, yeah," Alistair says, trying for a grin.

Bethany banishes the blood magic (again), with great prejudice.

"It's fine, I'm fine. We should—we should get you home. Can you stand?" she asks.

"I think so?" he says, a little dubious. "Maybe?"

It takes a while, but Bethany does finally struggle them into standing. Alistair leans heavily on her shoulder, all of him heavy armour and exhausted bones. Her sister is loudly berating the few people still milling about, "— _you couldn't have kidnapped Carver? I still would have come for Carver, even though he's annoying! But no, you have to pick the one who has_ children _, Maker, you've not a thought in your skulls_ —" although maybe that's more about giving Bethany and Alistair the privacy to pull themselves together than anything else.

Marian Hawke isn't  _always_  cruel.

(She is often cruel. There is a difference between  _often_  and  _always_.)

"I am never letting you ought of my sight ever again," Bethany tells him under her breath. "And we're disowning my sister."

Alistair grins into her curls again. "Good."

"Good that I'm never letting you out of my sight, or good that we're disowning my sister?"

"Both," he says, and then winces. "Ow, Maker, why does everything hurt?"

"Blood magic," Bethany murmurs. It curdles in her, white-hot fury, and the burst of emotion is enough to power a wave of warm healing magic into his joints. Alistair straightens unconsciously underneath her arm just a little, and it's enough. It's enough.

"It could have been demons?"

"Stop trying to make me feel better," Bethany says, but her lips twitch towards smiling.

"Is that what you think I'm doing?" he asks. "Perish the thought. I'm only pointing out that it really  _could_  have been demons, blood magic is so  _tame_  by comparison—"

"We're going home, and I'm putting you to bed," says Bethany, with the patient air of someone who's significant other has unquestionably lost their mind. "And you can explain to the girls why I had to leave them with my mother."

"Can't we make your sister do it?"

"They're five, Alistair. Do we really want  _my sister_  to tell a pair of five-year olds  _anything_?"

Alistair sort of sways, shakes his head like he's trying to clear himself of cobwebs. Blood magic lingers, twists, fogs up the mirror. "That… is a good point, but—"

"You two are just  _darling_ , but shall we move this along?" Marian breaks in, fluttering her eyelashes. "Else we might have to deal with the Knight-Commander, and that's just not something I have the desire to do today, hm?"

The colour drains out of Alistair's face. "She's going to be  _awful_."

"Yes, dear, she probably is," Bethany's sister nods sagely. She reaches out to pat Alistair's shoulder, but it's more a  _clasp_  than a  _pat_ , and her fingers dig into his armour hard enough to scuff the metal. The Champion of Kirkwall has never been one to do anything by halves, and now is no different: she holds onto Alistair's shoulder for a moment too long, vicious with it.

Something passes between them, some quiet nameless thing like duty, but Bethany couldn't parse it apart if her life depended on it.

But she knows that there are some things that Marian understands about people—about templars, about mages, about Kirkwall—that no one else really understands.

Alistair leans a little more heavily onto Bethany's shoulder.

She takes his weight without a word, and together, they limp back to Kirkwall.

(Homewards bound, again.)

Bethany will never remember what they talk about, that long shambling trek home. It's the denouement, the release, the exhalation of relief after holding stale air in her lungs for far too long. Her heart's all tripped and tangled in Alistair's gauntleted fingers but that's alright, it's alright because  _he's alright_ , and it's not like there's any part of her that he doesn't already own.

The sun is setting by the time they make it to Hightown.

Bethany herds Alistair in through the kitchen door as quietly as she can; it's dark, inside, so if they're lucky, Mother's already put the children to bed and they'll manage to escape to their bedroom unscathed.

Usually she doesn't mind the questions, and after leaving the estate in such a panic this morning, there are going to be questions aplenty.

But tonight, Bethany has other things to think about.

"Bedtime?" Alistair slurs into her skin.

"Bedtime," Bethany confirms.

She doesn't exhale and let her shoulders drop until they're safe inside their room, the door shut and the latch  _clicked_  behind them. She scours the place, throws up barriers without even really thinking about, little balls of light that  _splat_  against the wall and expand to shimmering veils so thin they almost don't exist. A flash of light and then they're gone, and suddenly it's a little easier to breathe.

"Alistair, what—"

"You know," he murmurs in Bethany's ear, face tucked against her throat, pupils blown out huge and dark like watching her work magic awes him more than he can say. "You're still the prettiest girl I've ever seen."

Bethany blinks up at him, lips parted in silent wonder. Only Alistair would be able to turn a literal kidnapping into a line. Honestly, she can't believe him. "You—you're impossible, did you know that?"

"So I've been told," he says, listing woozily against her, a warm golden line of skin and hair tucked in all around her. He presses his face into her curls, grinning half charming and half undead. "I think I should—probably lie down?"

"What am I going to do with you," Bethany says, even as she helps him to bed. She trembles a little, the churning inside of her turned to a dull roar. His armour bites into her side, and she wonders how can she ask him to keep wearing it. How can she ask him to wear it ever again? After blood mages and kidnapping and everything else that Kirkwall is on the regular,  _how_? "Your armour—"

"Should get that off," Alistair mutters, shaking his head.

Metal  _clangs_  as it hits the ground. Piece by piece, they come back to one another. The templar armour glints brightly in the slick of the firelight. Gauntlets, greaves, chest-plate, helmet; they sit scattered on the floor, pell-mell. The emblazoned Sword of Mercy is a stranger in this room, the Chantry's sunburst glow more threat than comfort.

Bethany turns away.

"Should we—?" she asks, wondering if they ought not put the things away.

"Nah," he says. "Leave it."

"Alistair…"

"C'mere, Beth," he says, opens his arms to let her crawl into the cavern of his chest. Alistair tucks her head beneath his chin. Blood magic leaves its mark, and she can feel it in the way he sort of droops, inhaling slow like he's trying not to gasp for breath. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too," Bethany says into his throat.

They check each other over for wounds, hands hesitant and awkward and just this side of scared, struggling to get their clothes off. What if there's something unfixable? What if there's something really wrong?

There are red raised welts around Alistair's ribs. Bethany near hisses at them.

"If I could kill her again I would," she says darkly, more to herself than to him. Bethany lays her hands against the welts and the healing is gentle despite the fury shaking in her chest.

"You ripped a man apart for me, today, Beth," Alistair reminds her, and she can't deny it because it's true. Force magic has some interesting applications when doling out death.

"Liked that, did you?"

"Strange things appeal to me, I'm sure you're aware."

"You are mine, Alistair Theirin," she says, very softly. And it's rare, it's so rare that Bethany uses his last name; it's so rare that it slips off her tongue because he hates it, because it's his and it's not his, because there are some things that will never stop hurting. "You are mine, and I am never going to let anyone take you away from me."

His fingers dig into her hips hard enough to bruise, but not hard enough to hide their tremble.

"Beth," he croaks. "Beth, I—"

"No," Bethany says. "This wasn't your fault. This wasn't—you couldn't—" and here she breaks off to shake her head, the pale golden glitter of the force magic that thrills beneath her skin sparking at her fingertips. She wants to pin him to the bed, she wants to hold him down beneath her and keep him away from the rest of the world forever, she wants to take him apart. "Andraste's blood, Alistair, if this was how you felt after—after the foundries—"

"Might have been," he says. "Something like that."

And she doesn't ask how he's ever been willing to let her out of his sight again, because right now Bethany thinks that she's the selfish one in this relationship. Maybe she always has been; elfroot and oiled metal and skin and soap, Lothering's familiar old song aching against the dark brown bark of an ancient tree. The sparkle of healing magic. The Chant of Light, rising up to the rafters, and then fading away into nothing. Saving a life, or losing it, or keeping it for her own; it's all selfish, and it's all her.

(Sometimes, Bethany wonders what happened to that little boy and his hollow-eyed elven mother. She likes to hope that they're safe, somewhere out there.)

Alistair shifts beneath her. He could wipe away the hold on his wrists without much effort— _my husband the templar_ , she thinks, a little hysteric as an image of Ser Thrask's vacant eyes flash in her mind, and then,  _what are we going to do_ —roll over her and seal her magic away, grin, kiss her dark and breathless. It's a game they've played before.

But tonight isn't a night for playing games.

Tonight is a night for laying  _claim_.

"You're mine," Bethany says again. "You are  _mine_! I'll walk into the Void backwards before I let some stark raving blood-witch take you away from me!"

"Feeling a bit possessive?"

"When it comes to you, I—" she flushes from the tips of her ears all the way down her chest, and doesn't back down at all. "Yes, alright, yes! I am! You could have died, Alistair, you could have—what if you'd died?"

"You'd be alright," he says, lips quirking upwards and eyes going soft, and it's such a strange, awful echo of an old conversation that Bethany could cry. His hands relax a little, an exhalation that might be relief or maybe gratitude, and he settles beneath her weight. It's an easy thing to keep him held there, with her knees on either side of his hips and her hands pressed to his chest. His heartbeat thuds up through her arms.

That's Alistair, steady as he ever is.

Bethany looks down at him for a long time, tracing over the planes of his face. There's a thin scar through his left eyebrow. His cheeks are hollower than they used to be. And there are lines, now, around his mouth and at the corner of his eyes. Laughter and sorrow and the sweetness in his smile.

"Are you alright?" she asks, softly, at last. "Really, I mean."

"I will be," Alistair says, and finally Cleanses away her magic to pull her down.

—

Things get quiet in the days after the kidnapping.

(Quiet: chopping vegetables in the hall, knife sharply sterile, cucumber rind peeling away heavy green and filmy white beneath the hands. Quiet: waking up tangled together, limbs akimbo, and breathing, breathing, breathing in the silence, finally figuring out how to hold on. Quiet: Marian, hovering, spitting blood and shiny bits of broken teeth into the sink.)

Alistair turns his armour in.

"No," he says, when he comes home from the Gallows unburdened by heavy silverite and cold steel. There's still a hole in his neckline, which somehow says so much about who he is. "I can't be a templar. Not anymore."

Whatever happened out on the Wounded Coast before they got to him  _changed_  him, but he won't talk about it. Or no, not  _changed_ ; that's not the right word. It  _solidified_  him, made the decisions he'd already been in the process of making come that much faster, that much more self-sure.

He puts his arms around Bethany's waist, sets his chin against the top of her head, and very nearly  _dares_  the city to come at them.

Kirkwall, predictably, responds with  _unmitigated delight_.

And so—

There is a dead dwarf in the nursery.

There is a dead dwarf in the nursery, and there is blood everywhere, and Malcolm is  _screaming_. There is a dead dwarf in the nursery in Carta wear, and the twins are crying, and the window is open. There is a dead dwarf in the nursery in Carta wear with his daggers out, and Bethany will never know how they manage to put the room back to rights because everything happens so fast that one thing smears into the next, and the next thing she knows she's got Mal wrapped safe in her arms and the twins clinging to Alistair, all five of them so close they might as well be one living creature.

She rocks Malcolm and Alistair rocks her, and the twins hang between them in perfect balance.

But the splash of blood on the wall is laid out from Malcolm's bassinet, a full perfect arc sketched out brilliant and bloody on the floor. Carina isn't anywhere close, and just like that, something goes awful tight, awful hot, awful terrible in Bethany's throat—oh, Maker,  _Maker_ , this wasn't her daughter, this was her  _son_. This death was her  _son_. In between the slick crimson shine of light off of fresh blood, the howling of tiny lungs, Alistair's clumsy affection and her own cowardice, Bethany counts like this:

One little, two little, three little witchlings.

Herself, her daughter, her son.

The Hawke family carries its magic with such good grace. But this… this is something else. It's like a tear in the world, like someone took a dagger and slashed it across the dwarf's throat with enough force to throw him clear across the room. It's like—it's like—

It's like what Marian would do, Bethany thinks, and violently has to force herself not to be sick.

Oh, Andraste.

Bethany rocks Malcolm, rocks him, rocks.

"Everything's alright now, everything's fine, Mummy's here, I'm here, you're safe now," she murmurs, a thready lullaby lingering in the back of her throat like sweet spun sugar, soft and comforting as an old blanket. Malcolm seems to calm with the familiarity, but the twins only draw closer together, a horrible emptiness settling in behind Liana's mouth and Carina's eyes. Two parts of the same whole, they are, and no mistake.

"Mummy," Liana says, "he was gonna—he wanted us to come with 'im, he said—he said he needed us but it didn' matter if we're alive r' _not_ —"

Alistair makes a furious dark sound low in his throat, tucking Liana closer into the crook of his arm. He glances at Bethany out of the corner of his eye, and they share a long, chest-clenching look.

What in Andraste's hallowed name has Marian done,  _now_?

Of course, there will be no telling that until the Champion of Kirkwall gets back from gallivanting about the city for a late evemeal, and so in the interim, Alistair and Bethany go about putting the nursery back in order. The children won't sleep here tonight, and maybe not ever again; blood leaves such terrible stains.

(Not to mention that Bethany needs to think long and hard about how she's going to keep  _two_  baby mages out of trouble. She'd known, Maker, she'd  _known_  when she was pregnant, but it's still—still hard. And the blood in the nursery hadn't hummed with power the way it should have. It makes her sick to think—to  _think_ —)

They move Malcolm's bassinet to their bedroom, but leave the twins' trundle. Bethany expects that her daughters are going to be sleeping in between her and Alistair for the foreseeable future; she's not wrong about that.

Bedrooms are supposed to be safe places.

When they're not, no one wins.

Twilight creeps over the Amell estate the way it's prone to doing, long wispy shadow-fingers reaching down Hightown's white stone and dredging up the nighttime all muted blues and greys and heather purples like a fading bruise. The Waking Sea carries the day's bitter bright heat away on salted breezes, just as it's carried away so many other things: the Qunari, the darkspawn, the Hawke family entire.

But even so, it can't carry away the fear.

After the sun's gone down and the twins have finally fallen back asleep, Bethany fits herself into the crook of Alistair's body like an old habit. She drops her head to rest against his collarbone with an exhausted, heavy sigh, weary all the way down to her bones; Andraste, she doesn't think either of them are going to be able to let any of their children out of their sight for a very long time. As it is, she's spelled a barrier across the window so that nothing can get in nor out, but it still doesn't feel like enough.

(The dead dwarf is in a bag in the vault, waiting for Marian to come take away. Bethany's older sister has dumped worse things into Darktown than a few dead Carta, and it  _certainly_  won't be the first time the Hawke family's dumped their dead garbage into the sewers, but likely the Coterie would take issue with anyone except Marian trying it.)

"Today was terrible," Bethany murmurs into his skin.

"It was that, yes," her husband hums into the top of her head, folding his arms around her. He's so solid, so wonderfully, steadily solid. "You saw what I did, didn't you? That blood—"

"It wasn't Carina, Alistair," Bethany closes her eyes and shakes her head slowly. "She wasn't anywhere near there."

"I was going to say, it didn't feel like her magic," he says. Inhales. Exhales. "Didn't feel like her magic, at all. Maker's breath, we've got our hands full, I'm going to have to follow you three 'round everywhere to keep you out of trouble."

"Templar," Bethany says. Her mouth picks up a little at the corners.

"Not anymore, if you recall," Alistair says, cheerfully, and for once it's without the awful thready undertone of self-deprecation. Something's settled in him, now that he's out of the Gallows.

He smiles more, maybe that's it.

"I've never heard of anyone getting magic so young," Bethany says, very softly. She won't talk about the blood, not yet. She can't be sure, but Andraste's pyre, she knows what fresh blood feels like. "He's not even two years old."

Alistair murmurs his assent darkly into Bethany's hair, gathering her up ever closer in his arms and holding on. Tension bleeds out of them both as they cling to one another, there in the dim glow of moonlight into the nursery, and Beth finds herself sinking into the embrace with an almost embarrassing relief. She presses her face into the crook of his neck and breathes out.

It's been such a long day.

"I love you," Bethany whispers it like the confession it is. "I love you so much that it scares me."

"It scares you? What am I, chopped darkspawn liver? Eurgh, chopped-up darkspawn liver, never mind, that  _would_  be frightening. I don't think I'll be able to eat liver again after that thought, we'll have to tell your mother—"

Bethany giggles a little wetly into his throat because she's not crying yet, but laughing might just do her in. "You're the silliest man I've ever known, did you know?"

"I try," says Alistair. He smooths a hand over her curls, past the knob of her spine and down to the dip in her lower back. "Imagine if I  _wasn't_  silly, Maker's breath, you'd be so bored."

"Oh, hush

. Bedtime?" Bethany says, because she's so tired and he's so warm, and there is nothing like the wide set of his shoulders to instill calm in the dark sticky place inside of her chest. She likes it here, likes being this close to him. It's so much easier to breathe.

"We're never going to get any rest ever again," Alistair mutters.

"No, probably not," Bethany agrees, because it's true. For certain, she doesn't think  _she's_  ever going to sleep again. "Tea, first?"

"Tea, first," he nods.

They don't unwind from one another for the entire walk down to the kitchens, murmuring soft sweet things back and forth that don't mean very much. It's little things to pass the time. Bethany's already thinking about hot milk and honey, the way it makes the body sleepy and slow and ready to rest in a way that so few other things do. The beat of Alistair's heart is a steady, comforting  _thud_  just beneath her ear, and maybe it lulls her into complacency, into a fall sense of security, or maybe it just lowers her guard enough that she's not halfway prepared for what's waiting in the kitchen.

Because she's not prepared for what's waiting in the kitchen at all.

(At least it's not another dead dwarf. Another dead dwarf would have been  _far_  too many dead dwarves.)

Carver is sitting at the table, half a day-old roll stuffed in his mouth.

For a very strange, long moment, no one says anything at all. The window's open and night air gushes in cool and wet and drenched with early fall's cold rain. Déjà vu  _warps_  the world for a second, and it might be Lothering, and it might be Lowtown, and it might be a hundred other places that Bethany's been before that are all exactly like this one now. It's like coming home: bright, wretched, endlessly fragile.

In the soft golden spill of firelight, they all just sort of  _stare_  at one another.

And then:

"You're dripping," Bethany says.

"Hello to you, too, buttercup," her twin says thickly around the bread in his mouth. He stops to chew, swallows, and makes a face at her. His hair is plastered down wetly to his head. "I could use a towel."

"You probably could," Bethany says. There are towels in the cubboard in the hall; her brother tromped right past them, but then, he wouldn't know, would he? He so rarely comes home, because the Wardens aren't all that fond of outside ties, and there's never time. She would ask him what it's like, down there in the dark, if she didn't think it would shut him off entire.

Carver is her twin. Bethany doesn't hesitate to leave him alone with Alistair, anymore.

(She goes to get the towel.)

When she gets back, she hovers in the doorway for a moment. Alistair's settled down at the table next to her twin, and there's a strange kind of comfort in the way their voices wash quiet into

her ears. Bethany thinks that they'd be good friends, if they could just give each other a chance.

Then again, she thinks that way about most things and most people, so perhaps not.

Alistair laughs, and this is what brings Bethany full into the room.

"Andraste, Carver, get decent," she says, dropping the towel onto his head before plopping herself into Alistair's lap. He always leaves space for her, and it's more comfortable anyway. "You're lucky Mother's in bed, she'd already be clucking."

"Why do you think I came in through the back?" Carver waves his fork at her, a stray bit of leftover meat from yesterday's supper speared on the tongs. "Between Mother and Mar, I haven't a flaming chance in the Void."

"Pity, that," Alistair says. "I wonder what it's like, being around them all the time."

"You shut up," Carver says, and sullenly stuffs another piece of bread in his mouth. Bethany's twin eyes the way they're twined together in the same chair, sneers a little bit. "I still can't believe she married you."

" _I_  still can't believe you were too scared of your own sister to come through the front door—"

"I  _am_  right here," Bethany reminds them, but it's as playful as the ribbing between them was, and Alistair laughs into her shoulder and even Carver grins, and there's something so close and bright about it that it almost wipes away the rest of the day—

Oh, that reminds her.

"There's a dead dwarf in the cellar," Bethany says plainly. "We were waiting for Marian, but, well. You know how she is."

"I'm sorry,  _what_?"

"Dead dwarf, cellar," Alistair repeats with his chin hooked over her shoulder, so that Bethany doesn't have to. It looks like it's just dawned on him, too, that Carver's likely to do just as well as Marian would when it comes to dumping bodies. No one questions Wardens; the people who do tend not to live very long.

"Maker, quit that, you sound like Mar," Carver grimaces, his whole entire face wrinkled up.

"You make that sound like a  _bad_  thing, little brother," comes a voice from the door. "Keep that up and you'll hurt my feelings!"

" _What_  feelings?!"

"The ones that'll keep you from having to dump a body in Darktown, darling," she says, and somehow, it's not surprising that Marian's leaning against the door frame with her arms crossed over her chest. Bethany's older sister pushes into the kitchen like she's pushing off a cliff, fast and jerky with her hair slicked back, and she drops down into the empty kitchen hair to prop her chin against her hands. "I suppose you could leave them a strongly worded note, but I don't remember that having much sway with corpses."

"Why are you the way that you are?" Carver asks the table.

"Because someone has to be," Marian says, and flutters her eyelashes. "So, is someone going to tell me  _why_  I'm going to be dragging a body halfway to the Void and back, or…?"

Not for the first time in her life, Bethany thinks that the world waits for her sister in a way it doesn't wait for anyone else. She glances at Alistair, mouth half-open 'round the words; there isn't really a good explanation that won't set the comforting orange warmth of the kitchen to spoil.

How does a person say,  _one of my children is a murderer_? How do you say,  _there's still blood splattered on the wall upstairs_? How do you tell someone,  _I could have lost my babies, oh, Maker, I could have_ lost _them_? How do you say that, and not ruin the fragile peace?

You don't, is the answer, and Bethany knows that very well.

"It was a bad day," Bethany says, softly.

"Oh, no, not rainbows and butterflies? In Kirkwall? I'll have to call the guard, Aveline will be  _so_  upset—" Marian starts but then stops at the deep dark silence that suffuses Alistair and Bethany both. She looks between them, and then to Carver, who just shrugs. Something shadowed crosses her face, and maybe it's just that it's the four of them again, together, like they'd never been parted. They are all so young here in the firelight.

Growing up is always the hardest thing, even when there are dead dwarves involved.

"Alright," says Marian, steadily. The shadows sink in. "What's happened?"

—

"This is a terrible idea."

"Yes, Junior, it is, but you say that about everything."

"Not wrong, though, am I?"

Three days later, the decision's been made, and the Hawke family have slipped their way out of Kirkwall and into the mountain wilderness of the Free Marches. Strange things grow, here, gnarled trees like screaming and poison plants like sleep. The Taint in the Deep Roads seeps up into the ground and leaves everything a barren wasteland; heat mirages rise in the distance, and old dead ghosts hide in the golden-dark crevices between pebbles. There are wyverns up the peaks, darkspawn far down below.

The Vimmark Mountains loom all around them, ancient monoliths of stone.

It's a testament to the Maker's ability to forget a place.

Bethany shivers, shoulders up around her ears. She's tucked between Alistair and Carver, the pair of them the last solid thing in the world. They've fallen back into it without even meaning to, haven't they? Marian to kill, Carver to distract, Alistair to protect, and Bethany herself to magic the universe to bits. Her stave is a heavy comfort across her back.

"—an old Warden fortress," Carver is telling Alistair quietly, beneath the  _tromp_  of boots and hooves against the dirt. Bethany's twin is staring at the mountains without seeing them. He hates riding, does Carver, always has. "I thought it was abandoned, but…"

"If the Carta are into it, it's not abandoned, Junior," Varric says, not unkindly. "Good try."

"Shit, Mar, maybe we should turn back—" Carver starts.

"No," says Marian. She's staring down into the low moaning maw of the valley, down where the dead barren trees claw into the cranberry sky like fissures in the universe for the Void to leak through. "We go down there."

And here, then, is Kirkwall's Champion; here is the woman who killed the Arishok in single combat, here is the woman who slew the Bone Pit Dragon, here is the woman who keeps defying Knight-Commander Meredith Stannard and living to tell the tale. Here is Kirkwall's Champion, in her spiky eldritch armour; her crimsons, her purples, her muted leather hues. Sky blue eyes and death claws and the slick silver shine of daggers.

Andraste, in so many ways, Marian's not even human anymore.

Legends don't have the time to be human.

(And they certainly don't have time to be older sisters. Maybe that's the worst part. Bethany glances at Carver out of the corner of her eye, and wonders if he's thinking the same thing. The Hawke family is a many-headed beast. Changelings, every one.)

"I hate darkspawn," Bethany's twin says, lip pulling up into a sneer. "But they make the Carta look intelligent, so…"

"Don't say that so loud, that's just asking for trouble," says Varric. For all that this is a family matter—and it  _is_  a family matter; Bethany's knuckles tighten around her staff, thinking of the children at home with Mother, thinking of Alistair at her side in unadorned armour, thinking of Marian's shuttered expression like this is the last place in the world that she wants to be—Varric is as much family as Bethany herself is. He carries himself with the same loose killer's grace that her sister does, albeit a damn sight less careless.

Maybe it's not a good thing that they're here, out in the wastes. Kirkwall is a powderkeg, always set to blow. Knight-Commander Meredith isn't doing much to help matters there, either, but Bethany's watched the way Anders and Neria have drawn into themselves as the days have gone on, and she thinks—

Well, there are a lot of things she thinks, but maybe right now isn't the time to think about them.

"Really?" Marian sighs aloud. She's bent near-double, examining a splotch of dried red-brown that looks like someone's tried to write their name through with shaking fingers. "More blood? Maker, can't we have  _one day_  where I don't have to deal with someone else's blood all over the place?"

Varric grins at Bethany's sister over the heat rising in waves off the sandy ground, and Bethany thinks that there is no one who loves Marian Hawke the way that Varric Tethras loves Marian Hawke. He's going to die talking her sister into legend, and he'll be happy for it.

"Aw, c'mon, Hawke," he says. "It could be worse! There could be dragons!"

"Well, now there's going to be dragons for  _sure_ —"

And true to form, there is a dragon. There is also a revenant, and arcs of white-blue lightning, and they're all the same dead thing locked away in a forgotten dwarven ritual meant to keep the dark things from ever being able to come back to the light. Bethany burns through the thick black ooze that leaks from reanimated corpses, ducking down behind Alistair and Alistair's heavy shield, grimacing all the awhile.

"Alright?" he asks her, amid the clang and crackle of battle.

Now isn't the time to be smiling at him like a fool, not when there's rancid blood across her face and other worse things in the mud at her feet, and her magic sings through her veins like  _want_ , gold and possessive and so hungry. Alistair is hers, he's  _hers_ , and no blood mage or dwarf or, Maker forbid,  _darkspawn_  is going to take him away.

(This does seem to have been a running theme of her life.)

Bethany thinks that none of the Hawke family have ever had very good timing.

"Mmm," she nods, wipes sweat and dirt away. "Alright."

They fight their way down and down and down, deep into the cool depths of the Deep Roads. Varric's been very quiet ever since they stumbled across Gerav, wordlessly rubbing his thumb back and forth over the turquoise band that Marian had pressed into his palm.

Whatever is down here is worse than any of them thought, truly.

And deeper still, they go.

"— _bound here for eternity, hunger stilled, rage smothered, desire dampened, pride crushed. In the name of the Maker, so let it be_."

The voice seems to echo around them, a low deep rumble that harkens to the old halls of forgotten memory. Bethany has heard that voice laughing, coughing, teaching her how to hold the entire world in her cupped palms. Lightning and ice and fire. Magic, in all its forms.

Bethany pulls in a sharp breath.

"Mari, was that—did you hear—didn't that sound like—?"

"Yes, Bethy," Marian says, grimly. She wipes her daggers off against her thigh, the darkest streak against already-dark leather, and there's something frozen in her face though Bethany can't put a name to it. It's in the eyes; iced eyes, iced smile, iced soul. And though the Maker knows that they left Lothering to escape the darkspawn, it seems there's no escaping the past—or at least, there's no escaping destiny when she wants a say. These things always do come back to haunt us. Bethany's sister exhales through her teeth. "That sounded  _exactly_  like Father."

—

.

.

.

.

.

 _tbc_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> summertime is for partying. wintertime is for writing. cheers, kids.  
> 


	8. all that gold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _last of a kind_ — neighbours.

—

.

.

.

.

.

"Good morning," Alistair whispers.

"Are you real?" Bethany whispers back.

"I think so?"

It's so quiet that she doesn't dare breathe. The Amell estate hovers in the silence like something not entirely real. She doesn't expect that it'll last all that long, because this is Kirkwall and peace never does well in this city, but—

Bethany exhales.

Alistair is watching her with a strange look on his face, not quite a smile but getting there, warmth affection in the lines of his bones. He reaches out to drag her closer into his chest, and they're all tangled up in one another, her curls and his long limbs absolutely everywhere.

Bethany blinks at Alistair blinks right back, both their cheeks against the pillows, eyes wide in the morning sunlight. It's a one of those perfectly still moments in the world that never seem to exist anymore, one where there's only Bethany and Alistair and the quiet between them. No one needs anything and no one wants anything. It's just the pair of them, alone together.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Bethany whispers.

"Looking at you like what? I'm not looking at you like anything," Alistair says, grinning, and keeps on looking at her exactly as he has been.

"Like that!" she laughs, so quietly. "Like I'm—"

"Magic?" Alistair finishes the sentence for her. His eyes have gone soft, the exact colour of well-aged Chasind mead in the sunlight, but he doesn't move. They aren't quite touching, is the thing, even tangled in the sheets as they are. "Aren't you, or has something changed in the last day? How did I manage to miss that? Was it the Qunari? I bet it was the Qunari."

"Oh, hush," she says, mouth quirked. "I'm not magic because I want to be, you know, I thought we'd been over this."

Alistair just looks at her for a very long moment, more seriously than he's ever looked at her in his life. There are a lot of things left unsaid in it, that kind of painful solemnity that doesn't really have a name. His hand comes up to hover above her cheek. "Still?"

Bethany breathes. "Yes."

He nods after a moment, and drops his thumb to trace the line of her jaw. "I wish you weren't."

"How could I not be?" she asks, because more than anything, she wants to know. She would love an answer, because being so terrified all the time is  _exhausting_. Bethany knows how to hide. It's what she's good at. But with the children—

Andraste, the  _children_.

There so much here between them. Bethany tilts her chin up to catch Alistair's lips.

"I love you," he says into her mouth, some strange heart-twisting helplessness in the words. His fingers snarl into her curls, and he holds her by the back of her head to keep her close enough to still the shaking. "Do you know that? Maker, Beth, I love you."

"I know," she says, so easy. "I love you, too."

Alistair huffs a laugh into her ear, teeth worrying at the pulse beneath her jaw, the heavy weight of him pressing down into the cradle of her hips. He's suddenly her entire world and she drops her head back, bares her throat as easy as breathing, as begging, as though he couldn't kill her entire.

Bethany  _gasps_ —

An hour later, it's the little-girl laughter drifting up from the bowels of the estate that finally drags them from bed. Sleepy-slow and swaying, Alistair puts his arm around Bethany's shoulders, kisses her temple. "Do we have to be real, now?"

Bethany smiles up at him. "I don't know, do you want to see what kind of trouble the twins can get into if no one's around to stop them?"

"I try not to think about it," Alistair sighs.

"Buh!"

"Looks like someone else is awake," Bethany laughs. Malcolm yawns, the pearly white of baby teeth bright around the gurgling laughter.

"You sleep more than either of your sisters ever did, did you know," Alistair says, conversationally. "It's nice, I didn't think I was ever going to make it through a whole night without  _someone_  crying."

"Oh, they weren't that bad—"

Malcolm wobbles as he stands in his bassinet, the soft little curl of his fists around the edge. He blinks big dark eyes up at them, that big gap-toothed smile wide and clapping, goes, "Da! Da! Buh!"

It's a good thing they're holding onto one another, Bethany thinks, extraordinarily amused, because Alistair half-staggers against her as the baby-babble goes through him. His eyes are wide. "Did he—did he just—?"

"I don't know, did he?"

"Da!  _Da_!" Malcolm babbles, reaching his hands up for Alistair's face the way all beloved children reach up for their parents, the imperious demand to be held and the unconscious expectation of immediate acquiescence. He's got a brilliant grin on his face, does their son, stark as starlight in the dark of the night, and he doesn't at all expect to be denied. And there is something of the Maker in the way that Alistair scoops their son up, Bethany thinks. Some kind of holy, some kind of awe.

They cradle one another, the pair of them, a fraction of her family bleached pale in the morning light.

Bethany's breath catches, tears a sudden threat in her throat.

Oh,  _Alistair_.

Bethany leans against him, smiling quiet over the absent way her husband folds her into the clutch of baby-babble and adoration. He does it so automatically, is the thing: Alistair doesn't even think about making space for her, because it's as second nature as drawing in air.

One arm slung around her hips and the other around their son, Alistair looks happier than he has done in a very long time.

(Bethany presses her mouth to his collarbone like a secret.)

"Breakfast?" she asks. "Or are we going to let Liana and Carina run my mother and Orana into the ground?'

Alistair has the gall to snicker. "You know, at this rate, they're going to give your sister a run for her sovereigns."

Bethany goes very pale at the thought. Her sister is  _already_  half a martyr—there's no telling what she'd get up to with the Fade at her disposal. "Sweet Andraste, I hope not. Can you imagine my sister with  _magic_?!"

"She's probably try to murder the Divine," Alistair says, consideringly. "I mean, not that she might not do that, regardless, but—"

"We're not going to think about it," Bethany says, firm. Malcolm is chewing on his fist, which means that it  _is_  time for breakfast. Some days Bethany worries about him—the twins started talking early, or at least Lia did, and she speaks for the both of them, but Malcolm has been nearly the perfect opposite. Mother says not to worry about it, that Marian didn't start talking until she was well older than three, but there's no helping it.

There's nothing love doesn't make more difficult.

Besides, Malcolm might not be able to speak, but he always makes himself understood.

And it  _is_  breakfast time.

Alistair and Bethany make their way in meandering arcs through the estate hand in hand, following the sounds of family echoing through the halls. It's not a long journey, nor a particularly difficult one, and what's at the end is hardly a surprise at all. Liana and Carina are making a mess in the kitchen, chasing one another 'round the long table and screeching with laughter. Mother's watching them kind of amused, Orana looks on the verge of tears, and Sandal is clapping in the background; it's a whole mess of noise and life and family, tossed pell-mell into the air.

Dear Maker, this  _family_.

"Girls, slow down," Bethany calls, exasperated mirth in the mouth. Andraste, was this how her mother always felt when she and Carver were causing trouble? "You're going to give Orana a heart attack!"

The twins freeze in place, turn their near-identical faces to blink near-identical brown eyes innocently at Alistair and Bethany, standing in the doorway. They sort of glance at one another, a conspiring little twitch that has Bethany thinking that they are going to be an absolute  _terror_  when they're older, and then Liana's face splits wide into a grin, and she goes, "Hi, Mummy! Hi, Dad! We're making Nan laugh!"

"Are you, now," Alistair says, raising his eyebrows at them. "I don't know, Lia, it looks more like you're causing a ruckus—"

"Father!" Lia says, aghast, and the pair of them barrel into Bethany's middle to wrap thin arms around her. They hardly reach her waist, old gold heads covered over in long ocher ringlets, and they  _cling_. Limpets, they are  _limpets_! Liana's face scrunches up with righteous childhood scandal, the kind that's too big for a body. She announces, "Mummy, Father's being mean to us!"

"Oh,  _Father_ , is it, now—"

Bethany smiles, gathers them up so that she's got one twin on each hip. They're nearly getting too big for this and they both know it. They keep close all the same. "If you three are quite done, I think Malcolm's hungry."

"Mal's always hungry," Lia says, tossing her head. Carina nods solemnly on her other side.

"And you aren't?" Bethany asks, raising her eyebrows. "Why were you bothering Orana, then, hm? Was that just a bonus?"

" _Mother_ ," Liana says, and reproach is a very strange emotion to see on a five-year-old's face. "We wouldn't!"

"See, look, you're  _Mother_  now, too," Alistair says, rather cheerfully, hoisting Malcolm up a little higher. He hasn't the hips for baby-bustling, and he does it all the same. Bethany's heart gives an offensive little  _wibble_. "No gratitude, these ones. C'mon, Mal, let's find you something to eat that isn't your hands."

" _Alistair_ ," Bethany says, and he laughs because he's ridiculous.

(The twins come by it honestly, at least.)

It takes a fair bit of help, but eventually, Alistair and Bethany get food into all three of their children's mouths. They settle in for a day of keeping the little ones out of trouble, or at least out of the templars' line of sight, which is what most noble parents seem to do with their time when they're not lounging around the Viscount's keep. There's gardening to do, and helping Bodahn figure out supper, and—

"Bethy, I need your templar!"

—and there's always Marian to consider, too.

"Not a templar," Alistair reminds Marian. He's concentrating on the unsuccessful venture of trying to convince Carina to eat porridge. It's not going well, given that Carina hates porridge and would much rather the bowl be on the floor. Bethany loves him absurdly.

"Yes, dear, you keep saying that. And then you go and be useful and ruin it completely! We're going slaver-hunting," Marian's lips pull up into a horrible smirk, all the edges so sharp. "Come help, I need help keeping Fenris from ripping hearts out."

"You need more help than that," Alistair mutters, too low for anyone except Bethany to hear.

He's not wrong, either.

(Bethany's sister needs  _so_  much help. Fenris and ripping hearts out is just one thing; there are all the  _other_  things that Marian seems to be keeping in her pocket, blood mages and thieves and murderers alike. It's half a wonder she's lived this long, honestly. It's half a wonder the  _rest_  of them have lived this long, besides!)

"Is that a yes?" Marian asks, fluttering her eyelashes. "If it is, we need to go now."

"Fine, that's a yes," Alistair sighs. He glances at Bethany out of the corner of his eye. This won't be the first time, nor will it be the last; her husband has taken to following Marian around when she's off adventuring, something about trying to head the Champion of Kirkwall off before she really builds up steam enough to do damage to the foundations of the society. It's a lovely sentiment, really, except that Marian has no regards for normal human decency, so it's sort of wasted on her.

"Excellent," Marian claps her hands, very well-pleased. "I'll meet you outside. Daylight's wasting, we've got Tevinter to corral!"

And then she's gone, just as quick as she appeared. She's like lightning, sometimes, is Marian; fast and blinding, and entirely capable of turning one's life upside-down in a thirty-second period, so long as it's the wrong thirty second. Alistair and Bethany sit still for a moment, surrounded by the mornmeal's detritus. The twins managed to wiggle out beneath Bethany's older sister's frightening ability to focus all attention on herself, and now only Malcolm is left.

For a moment, it's very silent. They just look at each other, the pair of them settled across the table from one another, not touching but both suddenly aware that there's a possibility that they might be separated.

But it's not the first time.

And it's  _certainly_  not the last.

"Try not to get killed," Bethany reminds Alistair.

"I'll try—"

"Or kidnapped," she continues. "Once was enough."

Alistair snorts. "I don't much remember having a say in that."

"No one ever does," Bethany smiles out of the corner of her mouth, but it's not a happy thing. She still can't—she still can't think about it, can't handle the thought of that sick red wash bound around his ribs, he'd had bruises for weeks and weeks and Andraste, if Bethany could raise the dead, she'd do it just so she could kill that bitch all over again. "Please be safe?"

"I'm not going to the Gallows, love."

"No. You're going with my sister," Bethany says. She reaches over the table to catch his fingers. "And she's worse."

Alistair doesn't reply.

This is, unfortunately, true.

—

After Alistair's gone and Dog is outside guarding the girls, Bethany goes to find her mother.

Finding Leandra Hawke, however, is not to be.

Because as Bethany heads through the purple-dusk estate, heavy velvet red and solid dark oak all around her, she finds someone else, instead.

Ser Cullen sits in the hall by the fire, hands clasped around what might be a cold cup of tea, looking like he hasn't moved in a century. It's the stiffness to his shoulders, the incredible discomfort of being somewhere that he's not at all sure he fits; Andraste, he's lucky that Mother is out in the gardens with the twins, because she would be clucking her tongue and flicking her fingers and finding ways to order him around the way she does to people who look like they could use a good teasing.

It is a strange thought.

Alistair's not here, after all.

(And Ser Cullen knows this. He's well aware that Alistair is off cleaning up Marian's messes—he's been all alone in the Gallows for nearly a season, now. Bethany can't imagine that that had been a fun conversation, if only because Ser Cullen has fewer friends among the templars than even Alistair does. Losing a friend like that must burn; Alistair has Varric and Fenris and Donnic and even Anders, on a good day. Ser Cullen has no one at all, anymore. It's not an easy thing.)

"Ser Cullen?" Bethany asks. "Are you alright?"

He jerks a little, milky tea slopping down the sides of the cup. Ser Cullen blinks a little blearily at her. "I—oh, hello, Lady Bethany. Yes, I'm—I'm fine."

"You don't look fine," Bethany says, smiling as gently as she can. Best not to spook him; he  _does_  look a little ill, the skin around his eyes gone tight and white, all the rest of the colour leached from his face. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"Solona—Lady Amell, I should, her name, it's Lady Amell—she asked to see me, I didn't think—"

Bethany thinks of her cousin, the long sweeping bell-sleeves of her dresses and the lack of colour so unlike mage robes, the way she always seems just the slightest bit out of time. She's been even scarcer, of late, but perhaps it isn't such a strange thing that after all this time Solona wishes to see Ser Cullen. It's never been a question, in his case; Ser Cullen still staggers, sometimes, when Marian walks into a room. Bethany's older sister only shares a face with their cousin, not a personality.

Between Ser Cullen's existential angst and Solona's quiet falling apart, Bethany is sure that they have plenty to talk about.

And yet—

Andraste, it's wrong to let him think that there's anything like hope.

(She can't do that to him.)

"Solona doesn't love you, Ser Cullen," Bethany says, softly, gently, as conciliatory as she can. "I don't mean to hurt you, but she's not… she's not capable of it. She wouldn't know how."

"I—" he swallows. "I know. I didn't think—I didn't dare think she did. Not after—"

_Not after the Aeonar_ , he doesn't say, but Bethany hears it all the same. He's never spoken about what happened at Kinloch Hold, and for that matter, neither has Solona, but Bethany knows as unhealed wound when she sees one. What little she's been able to piece together goes like this: Solona and Neria grew up together. Solona was always terrified and Ser Cullen fell in love with her because he has no idea what love is, and when things went sideways, the Chantry sent them both away. Neria followed Solona. If Bethany had to guess, she'd guess that Neria probably blew Ferelden's Circle up on the way out.

Kirkwall isn't the Aeonar, though.

It's not hard to say who got the better end of that deal.

Bethany sighs, and presses her arm into his side. It's a little bit like forgiveness and a lot like solidarity. Ser Cullen makes a wounded noise in the back of his throat.

"She doesn't hate you, you know," Bethany says.

"She should," Ser Cullen mutters.

"That's not usually the way people work," she smiles out of the corner of her mouth, hair curling darkly around her face. Bethany tilts her head, rolls it all around. "At least, not when they don't want to kill you, and I don't think Sonny could hurt a fly."

"She still should," he says. Ser Cullen's shoulders slump, but he does seem to breathe a little easier. Some of the awful nothing in his face has eased, and the lines around his mouth are a little softer.

"Why? You haven't ever said."

"She didn't tell you?" Ser Cullen blinks, surprised.

"No," Bethany says.

"I—supervised her Harrowing," Ser Cullen says. There's anxiety in his voice, a rag wrung absolutely dry, something twisted so tight it almost rips apart. "Maker's breath, don't look at me like that, it's not as—" and he stops to wince at the look she gives him, "—alright, fine, I take it back, it is as bad as it sounds."

Bethany continues to stare at him, lips pursed.

"Lady Amell, she's better than anyone," Ser Cullen says, a little helplessly. "She always was. And I was—I was very young."

"You're still very young now," Bethany reminds him. "We all are."

"You have children, Lady Hawke."

"And  _you_  are Knight-Captain of the templars,  _Ser_."

Ser Cullen can't argue that.

It's not a question of love. Bethany knows that, because in most cases, it is  _never_  a question of love. She loves Alistair, loves him so much that sometimes she hurts with it. Bethany loves Alistair because she knows him, knows him down to his marrow, knows his fears and his wants and his dreams and even after learning all of those things about him, she still  _wants_  him. Even after children, even after a decade, even after they've both nearly died. There will never be anyone else. But Ser Cullen didn't love Solona, because Bethany doesn't think Ser Cullen ever really knew her cousin at all.

This is the problem of love, its great equalizer: to love someone is to  _know_  someone, and if one does not  _know_  someone, one cannot love them.

Bethany thinks that Ser Cullen is realizing that, even as they sit here right now. She can see it sinking into him, the knowing. And knowing does that, especially self-knowing, because knowing is one of those things that comes in waves, and once a person is overcome, there is no going back to before.

Like water into sand.

(Worse: like lost homes. Bethany thinks that Ser Cullen knows all about those.  _She_  certainly does.)

Ser Cullen exhales.

His shoulders go down.

"Are you going to be alright?" Bethany asks.

"I—I think so, yes," he says, inhaling deep. "Thank you, Lady Hawke."

"What are friends for?" she grins at him, nudging his arm again. Ser Cullen manages a rather pained grimace that could almost be misconstrued for a smile, but Bethany counts it as a win. Ser Cullen often looks like he hasn't smiled in half an Ade, and it's not an easy thing, getting some amusement out of him.

"Your family has been better to me than I deserve," Ser Cullen says, very quietly. "I do mean that."

"I know," Bethany says. She shifts, drops her head back to soak in the sun filtering in through the open window. The whole hallway is golden mahogany in the light, dust motes shimmering in the quiet air. "That you mean it, anyway. We're just people, Ser Cullen."

"Good people," he says.

"We try."

Ser Cullen nods as though he's not quite sure what else he's to do. "Everyone tries."

"They do," she says. "Are you really going to be alright?"

"I'm fine," he says. "Thank you."

"You're a terrible liar, Ser Cullen," Bethany reaches over to pat his hand, not unkindly. Her mother would be much better at this, because Mother has always been very good at sorting people out when they don't want to be sorted, but Bethany is what there is and so she's what's going to have to do. Ser Cullen needs someone in his corner, and Alistair isn't here right now.

Even if Alistair  _was_  here, Bethany doesn't think her husband would be much help. She loves him, but he can be a bit useless when he doesn't think there's a point, and Alistair has  _never_  seen a point in letting Ser Cullen make puppy eyes in Solona's direction. He's always been very firmly in Bethany's cousin's camp on this one.

Not that Bethany blames him.

The Gallows weren't kind, to Alistair.

They aren't kind to anyone, to be sure, but they were particularly unkind to her husband, and neither Bethany nor Alistair has forgiven them yet.

Bethany suspects, however, that they've been just as terrible to Ser Cullen.

(The lyrium sings beneath his skin just the way her own magic does. It pours out of the crags in his skin, a brilliant poisoned light flavoured glowing magic blue. Bethany is so, so,  _so_  fervently glad that Alistair never took a drop more than he absolutely had to. The addiction addles a person, takes away their own self entire. It hasn't happened yet to Ser Cullen, but the beginnings of it are starting to slip through the cracks. Pity is bitter as ashes in her mouth.)

"Do you want me to go find her?" Bethany asks, what seems like a long time later.

"Yes, please," Ser Cullen says. He's suffered enough, and they both know it.

Bethany stands up, spine  _cracking_  loudly. None of her bones seem to fit right, in this moment: she's not sure what she's waiting for, but she is waiting for something. Ser Cullen stares up at her for a long moment with a quiet death in his face.

_I could have been him or he could have been me_ , she remembers Alistair saying, again.

Andraste's blood, but she's glad they're not. Andraste's blood, but she's glad that Alistair is Alistair, and not someone else.

And after everything, Solona isn't that hard to find.

The library is easily one of the most beautiful places in the entire estate. The air here is drenched in vanilla and leather, the musk of old paper layered over ink and sunlight thick in the nose. There's no other scent quite like it, and no other stillness quite like the stillness of an empty place full of books. Solona spends most of her time here, with Neria or without, and here is where Bethany finds her.

"Ser Cullen's here," Bethany says, simply.

"I'm not surprised," Solona murmurs. She looks up from the tome spread open across her lap, blinking. Again, Bethany is struck just by how very much her cousin resembles her older sister. The Amell blood breeds true, it seems. "Has he been waiting long?"

"A little while," Bethany says, and that's all.

Amell and Hawke stare at one another for a long, unbroken moment, and then Bethany reaches out a hand.

Solona takes it. Pulls herself into standing.

Holds on.

The two women don't bother to talk on the way back. Ser Cullen is precisely where Bethany left him, and what little colour he's gained back in his cheeks drains away as soon as Solona steps through the doorway.

"Hello, Cullen," says Solona.

"Lady Amell," says Ser Cullen, inclining his head gravely. "You wanted to see me?"

There's an indefinable change to the air. This mirrors another day that Bethany lived, where Ser Cullen walked in to find Solona sitting in the kitchen, teacup in hand, and nearly died of her. Solona walks in, and Ser Cullen nearly dies of her all over again.

It's a shame, but he's really terrible at this  _getting over her_  thing.

Bethany looks between them. Solona is still and beautiful as a statue. Ser Cullen wears the grim flatness of a man about to go to his death. "Do you want me to stay?" she asks, though she isn't entirely sure who's she's talking to. It might be neither of them. It might be both.

"No," Solona says. "We're fine, thank you."

"I—" Ser Cullen breaks off, "—what she said."

Bethany isn't about to argue. What's here is old, deep and dark, and it puts all the petty little resents that Bethany lives with on a daily basis—that  _all_  people live with on a daily basis—to shame. Kinloch Hold is not the Gallows, and Solona is not the same girl that Ser Cullen thinks he fell in love with.

Maybe they ought to have dealt with this a very long time ago.

But they didn't.

And so here they are.

Bethany leaves them in the foyer without saying much more. She doesn't have the fortitude to coach them both throught it; maybe if she were Marian she'd be able to do it, but she's not her older sister, she's  _not_ , and right now all Bethany wants is her mother and her children and for the world to make sense again.

"Oh,  _there_  you are," says Mother. "What kept you, darling? Alistair's been gone an hour!"

"Solona and Ser Cullen," Bethany sighs, flops down in the wrought-iron seat next to her mother and tries not to wince. "It's—you know how they are. He's being very silly about it, she clearly doesn't want anything to do with him."

Bethany's mother laughs, golden in the open air.

"Oh, darling, don't you know? Your cousin prefers women," Mother says, and it's horrible because she's sort of laughing about it, as though her eldest daughter isn't exactly the same. "That boy never stood a chance!"

—

"Has anyone seen Nerry?!"

Three days after Ser Cullen leaves the estate with a strange, clean emptiness in his face, Solona comes blowing into Bethany's sun-room, eyes wild. It's so unlike her that for a moment, Bethany thinks that it's actually Marian in a wig, but no—this is Solona, and she is  _terrified_.

"No, I haven't," Bethany says. She's got her legs thrown over Alistair's lap, and he's idly stoking circles into her bare ankle. "Not since yesterday. Why?"

"I just—I haven't seen her today, and she's been—" Solona takes a sharp breath that sounds like self-recrimination before she forges ahead, regardless, "—she's been less present than usual, and I'm  _worried_  about her!"

Both Bethany and Alistair straighten up all at once. It's not unusual for either of them to go days without seeing the little elven mage. Neria's always been prone to wandering off; it's certainly only gotten worse as she's discovered how apparently fascinating Anders and Darktown are, especially in conjunction, and so the lack is not exactly alarming.

But for  _Solona_  to go a day without seeing her…

Oh, Andraste, what's  _happened_?

"That's not good," Alistair says, rather unnecessarily.

"Help me find her," Solona says, swallowing an awful sound. "Please."

Alistair's up quick as a whip and already moving, pressing a fleeting kiss to Bethany's hair and moving into Solona's orbit. It's funny—in some ways, the thing that makes people stop and stare at Marian is reflected in Solona, too. It's that same brilliant edge that makes a person sit up and take notice, but it's never been so evident as it is now: Solona carries herself like something wild, and she is difficult to look away from. Lovely and lonely, in equal measure.

"Where was she last?"

"Anders," Solona says, and her voice is steady despite the fine tremble to her. "She was with Anders last, but that was yesterday, and I haven't—I haven't—"

"Hush, Sonny, it's alright, we're going to find her," Bethany soothes, but she shoots Alistair a look over her cousin's shoulder and finds her own stomach-twisting worry refracted over his face. Neria has no phylactery, and neither does Anders.

But magic leaves traces, and Neria's magic, in particular, is a unique flavour. Marian said once that she could always find Bethany once she'd magicked something, and Carver did always have a knack for finding what he was looking for, even if it didn't want to be want.

And Alistair has the benefit of a templar's training.

If anyone can find a missing elven mage girl in Kirkwall, it is Bethany's husband.

"Right," he says, breathing out slowly. "We'll have to split up. She can't have gone far. Take the Darktown tunnel, Solona, that'll get you down to Anders faster than anything else. Beth—"

"I'm staying with you," Bethany says, firmly.

Alistair smiles faintly, all the lines of his face creasing around the gold of his eyes. "That was the plan."

"Good," she says. "We can start with the Chantry—"

The words snap off as the floor rolls. Outside there's a flash of crimson-flower light, acid fuchsia that blinds everyone for a quarter-league. Oddly, Bethany thinks of fresh blood.

And then the world  _explodes_.

"Down!" shouts Alistair. Plaster shakes loose from the eaves, windows rattling, the  _groan_  of wood just beginning to break. Force magic takes hold of Bethany faster than she can think, furious goldenrod flickering into barrier white to hold off the rain of debris.

For one creeping, paralyzed moment in the aftershock, everything is perfectly still.

"The  _children_ ," Bethany says. It trembles in the dusty air.

" _Go_ ," Alistair curses something fierce and Bethany takes off, following the thin rising wail of three voices twining through the shaking walls.

She takes the stairs two at a time. "Liana! Carina!  _Malcolm_!"

There is a terrible silence.

And then:

"Mummy?"

"Oh, thank the Maker," Bethany exhales relief so intense it colours the air pale blue with frost. "Lia, where are you?!"

"With Mal! We can't—Mummy!"

There's a fallen beam across the doorway, and it is thoughtless terror that fuels the force magic. Bethany near breaks the door to pieces, and finds Carina, her arms shaking, holding the barest flickering of a barrier around her siblings.

Bethany's heart breaks in her chest.

Carina is her mother's daughter, through and through.

"Mummy?"

"I'm here, darling, I'm here, it's safe now, hush, you don't need to hold it anymore," Bethany whispers into Rina's hair, arms sweeping around the twins and pulling them close. Malcolm clambers over the edge of his bassinet to curl his little hands in Bethany's skirt, and stares upwards for a long time. There is a faint red wash of light in through the window that throws all of her son's features into sick definition.

"Buh," he says.

"Buh," Bethany agrees, throat tight.

"Beth, are the—?!"

"We're okay, Daddy," Lia says, from between the gaps in Bethany's arms. "Mummy found us!"

"Yes, she did," Alistair says. But his shoulders are still tense, and when he looks at Bethany, there's something hard in the lines of his mouth. "Your mother is worried about your sister."

"Of course she is," Bethany murmurs. Figuring out standing takes one moment and then another, but she finally gets Mal settled on her hip and Lia and Rina in some semblance of order, and sighs out slow. "But we promised we'd help find Nerry."

"I somehow don't think those two things are mutually exclusive," Alistair says, grim.

"You don't think—?"

"You know that I do," he nods.

"Oh, Andraste," Bethany breathes. That horrible vermillion flash of light and the rumbling that had followed—of course it had to do with her sister, how could it not? Of course it had to be part of this; of course it wasn't something else, something halfways to  _sane_.

The world refuses to move without Marian Hawke pushing it forwards.

Bethany has always known this.

She gathers herself slowly, putting all the pieces of her broken heart back into place. Bandages will do for now. Alistair can glue her back together when it doesn't seem like the world is about to shatter, or at least when there isn't a very good likelihood that Kirkwall may explode like the powder keg that it is. And oh, Maker, what Bethany wouldn't give for just one day where she didn't have to worry that her family wasn't going to come out of this alright.

Or maybe just one day where she didn't have to choose between her children and her older sister.

(As though it's even really a choice at all. Malcolm buries his face in her shoulder. Bethany can feel the Fade shimmering around him, the same way it shimmered around Carina before she came into her magic, the same way it shimmers around Solona, around Merrill, around every other mage that Bethany has ever met in her entire life. The same way it shimmers around Bethany herself, probably.)

And Alistair knows what she's thinking, because Alistair  _always_  knows what she's thinking, and they stare at one another like an open wound.

"Mummy, listen," Lia says, tugging on Bethany's arm. Andraste, but she's so small. They are all so small, and they are all so young, and it makes every one of her teeth ache. "We'll be good for Gran, 'kay? Auntie Mary's bad at stuff."

_Bad at stuff_  is certainly one way of putting it, Bethany thinks, wry. "Auntie Nerry isn't much better. Will you look after Mal?"

"Mal looks after  _us_ , Mummy,  _obviously_ ," Lia says, as exasperatedly fond as a five-year-old can be. "See?"

Malcolm stuffs his fist in his mouth and grins, all pearly white baby teeth, which is incredibly concerning. These children, Maker help her.

But outside the window, the howling's already started.

This is Kirkwall, and perhaps Bethany ought not be so surprised.

Leaving the babies with her mother, however, is going to be an ordeal in and of itself. Mother won't make it difficult, she never does, and it's her idea to slip down into the tunnels to Darktown.

"We'll meet you at the docks," Mother says, firmly, without room for negotiation nor for argument. She shepherds Lia and Rina towards the basement vault with imperious little finger-flicks that cast long shadows over the walls. Leandra hitches Malcolm up, and sometimes Bethany sees her own inflections in the way that her mother moves. "Find your sister and hit her over the head for me, darling. And do try not to get killed?"

That's easier said than done, but—

Well, what  _isn't_  easier said than done?

Hightown is a mess. The roads are rubble, and that awful crimson light seems to linger in the air, sunk corrupted into the white stone. Alistair keeps one hand on his sword and the other twined through Bethany's, and they slip careful out of the estate and into the night. The rest of Hightown's inhabitants poke their heads out of their palaces, startling back inside when they feel the ground roll with the aftershocks.

But Alistair and Bethany have lived through darkspawn, and Qunari, and the  _templars_.

They are made of sterner stuff.

The destruction gets worse as the force of the blast becomes clear. The estates further towards the Viscounts' Keep have lost walls, windows shattered, halfways to obliterated entirely. The trees have all lost their leaves and Bethany is suddenly fervently glad they're as far from the highest parts of the city as they are.

"What  _happened_?" Bethany murmurs, bending down to examine a rosebush blown clean, only the last stubborn petals left clinging to the stems. She pricks herself, blood on the fingertips.

"Do we really want to know?" Alistair asks, voice low.

"We might not have a choice," she says, straightening up. There is glittering grit made of broken glass everywhere, leading up like a shining ribbon of refracted light to follow, and something about it strikes Bethany still with memory. Lothering, the same fragile silence as the darkspawn came.

She's about to bring it up, murmur something about old homes because Alistair always understands that, understands old homes—

But then they turn the corner, and find the center of it all.

Oh, Andraste, but the Chantry is a  _smoking hole in the ground_.

"I think we found where Nerry got to," Alistair says.

Bethany doesn't disagree. This glints with Neria's periwinkle sparkle, the precise line where the blast radius went off, the odd bulbous protection of the rest of the city: the trees in Hightown are stripped bare of bark, but here they've been burnt away entire, nothing left but blackened crisps of charcoal. She shivers in the wet summer heat.

Keeping promises is important.

Now they just need to find Marian.

But Hightown is empty of Solona's elven shadow, emptier still of Bethany's sister and her friends, and there's nothing but the smoke and the ruins of the Chantry left to hide in. The bones of the scorched dead are brittle chalky things cracked all the way through. The rubble reeks bitter, of blood and marrow and the burnt holes through Andraste's sunburst.

It feels like the end of the world. With the Chantry gone, and at a mage's hands—

"The Knight-Commander is going to have a field day," Alistair breathes, their thoughts running along the same lines. Knight-Commander Meredith had wanted the Right of Annulment after the Qunari invasion. She's wanted the Right of Annulment for a long time, and this will only be justification for the innocent hundreds left dead. Blood magic infects every person it touches, mages as well as templars alike. "Stay behind me."

Bethany's staff is heavy on her back. Her magic is thick on her tongue.

Perhaps it was always going to come to this.

It's a brutally ugly run back through Hightown to the steps down into Lowtown, dodging around clumps of templars with their swords out, a mad rush to the water and the Gallows, because where else would Marian be?

"Alistair? Is that you?"

Bethany and Alistair stop short, somewhere just beyond the crackling flames that eat up the Hanged Man. They blink at one another, turn in tandem to where the call had come from.

_Oh_ , Bethany thinks.  _Oh, Ser Cullen, no_.

But here they are.

Here they are.

The colour drains out of Ser Cullen's face as he stares at the pair of them in the burning half-dark.

"Why didn't—why didn't anyone  _tell_  me?" he croaks, looking from Alistair to Bethany like he might find the answers in the space between them, in the slick of light off of Bethany's stave, in the magic  _crack_ ling through the air. "Is it—is it just you?"

"No," Bethany says, because it's not the time for more lies, and Ser Cullen has been gutted enough. There is no satisfaction in it. But the old dread rises, and she keeps the feeling tethered sharp in her teeth. No more lies, but no truths, either; Liana, Carina, Malcolm. The omission fizzles. "Not just me."

"You know why we didn't," and it is Alistair who says this, and it's  _important_  that it's Alistair who says this. His forehead is creased, the lines around his mouth pulled down deep. He takes a half-step in front of her, wind in his hair, and for a moment Bethany remembers him in Lothering with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, mouth soft around the words  _what can I do, Beth? What do you need me to do_?

She'd fallen in love with him then, and she falls in love with him again now.

(They're both older and better and worse. Bethany's heart bleeds in her chest.)

Ser Cullen swallows hard. "Are they safe? The twins?"

"They're with my mother," Bethany says, and isn't surprised when some of the tension in Ser Cullen's face seeps away. He loves the twins more than anyone not family, perhaps. He would want them safe, even if their mother is mage. Even if they themselves, little as they are, have magic in their veins.

That's the problem with family.

You end up  _caring_.

"Alright," Ser Cullen finally says, and Bethany can feel the minute relaxation in Alistair's shoulders, and she reaches out to press her palm to the small of his back. He won't be able to feel the warmth through his armour, but it's the thought that counts.

"Are you coming with us or not?" her husband asks. "We don't have a lot of time."

The words crackle through the indigo night like the embers in the air, winking in and out faster than the stars. Bethany thinks:  _lightning, flame, force_. Her stomach knots into sickness, because all of a sudden, standing here staring across the gulf of Hightown's white stone burning—

It's a clumsy thing, the death of a friendship.

And Ser Cullen doesn't say anything at all, too shell-shocked to move.

"…Fine," Alistair says, calm as calm can be. The muscles in his jaw clench for a split second before they smooth out, and Bethany finds herself quietly reaching out to twine their fingers. He clings painful tight all the way down. "Doesn't matter."

He tugs Bethany past their old friend, keeping her tucked safe on his other side. He does it so fast that if she'd not been looking for it, she would have thought the movement was natural.

But—

Alistair always did have a habit of placing himself firmly between Bethany and anything pointy as might come her way, and now is no different. There's a grim determination to the set of his mouth. It makes her breathless for one endless moment, how much he is willing to set himself up against for her.

For them.

For this.

"Alistair," Bethany says, after they've turned the corner and left Ser Cullen behind in the fire and flames. She ignores the faint, high-pitched wailing that echoes up from the Gallows. The world is ending. What's one more minute, if it could save them both the heartache later? "Alistair, slow down, stop, you need to breathe."

"We have to—Beth, love, Malcolm and the twins—"

"Are with my mother," Bethany reminds him. Lowtown's winding cobbled streets are empty, but still she pulls him into the lee of a burned-out doorway, reaches up to cup his face. "Look at me. Are you alright?"

Alistair exhales. "No."

"I'm sorry," she says, nearly lost in the pop and hiss of Kirkwall's burning. The acridity of magic mingles with sorrow on Bethany's tongue.  _I am so sorry that you've lost someone you cared about_.

"Don't be," Alistair says. "I'll survive."

There's something final in it, and when he brushes his thumb along her cheek, it is infinitely gentle, achingly soft, adoration gleaming off the metal shards. Bethany leans into it, trying so hard to pretend that they're going to have a home to return to, after all of this. Surviving is only one part of the equation.

(Bethany thinks of the foundries, of sunshine breaking over the Wounded Coast, of the nearly-endless number of ways she and Alistair have nearly lost one another. To death or magic or clanging metal weaponry, to darkspawn or drowning or drink. There are a hundred terrible ways that they could have broken. The loss of a friendship is relatively mild, in comparison. It's awful, but it's true. The templars and their vicious Silences are as much a threat as they ever were. Ser Cullen, at least, is not cruel.)

The dull roar of the sea brings them both home.

Alistair holds on for one more moment; Bethany watches him allow himself the luxury of one more second of physical comfort before he straightens, shaking all the anxiety out. He's made of shattered glass, and it near kills her not to be able to drag him home and solder him back together.

"Come on," Alistair says. He cranes his head down towards her. "Let's go save our family."

"Let's," Bethany agrees. "Please don't die on me."

Alistair grins, teeth a vicious glint in the carmine light. "I'll try," he says, and dips his head to kiss her quiet.

—

"You have an hour to ready your people, Champion. Don't disappoint me."

The courtyard is startlingly empty, once the Knight-Commander is gone.

Worse, it's startlingly  _quiet_.

The screams of the fleeing mages have faded in the cooling night air. There's a tremble to Bethany's muscles, a ripple in a still pool, the kind of thing that comes with too little sleep and too much exertion. She slumps into Alistair's side, the exhaustion draping over her shoulders velvet-soft, and tries to figure out how to breathe.

"Alright?" he asks. There's blood speckled across his cheek. Bethany's stomach turns.

"Alright," she says.

Alistair snorts. He's always been able to see right through her, and a decade lost to grey dreams and white stone hasn't changed that. "You know, that was  _almost_  as convincing as that time you tried to tell me you weren't a mage."

"Oh, shush," Bethany says, without any real heat to the words. She leans her head against his chest plate, and it's not as good as being skin-to-skin because she can't hear his heart, but it's something. It gives her a moment to gather her thoughts, a sharp intake of smoke-choke air to be held in the lungs before the inevitable return to violence. It's a moment suspended in midair, the shiver as the magic takes hold, the tension humming just before a kiss.

Bethany's sister is wrapping her knee tight across the courtyard, resisting the decay.

But so is everyone else, and Bethany makes a decision.

"I'm going to make sure that my sister's alright," she murmurs, turning just a little so that she can press her mouth fleeting to his cheek. Alistair blinks at her, gets a look on his face that Bethany hasn't seen before—a crystalized heartache, something shivery-tender that hides a helplessness that that she doesn't want to name. It's not the way he looks at Carina and Liana, near beside himself with love, nor is it the way he looks at Malcolm, glowing with pride. It's nothing in-between, either.

It's the way he's always looked at her, but Bethany doesn't think he's ever been so  _obvious_  about it, before.

(It is  _need_ , that hideous thing.)

The real trouble, Bethany thinks, is that there's no guarantee that any of them are going to make it out of tonight alive. There's no promise that they'll see the sun rise together in the morning, for all that that was all either of them had ever wanted to do. There's no  _for sure_. Bethany lingers in his arms for a moment longer, and a moment longer, and a moment longer because—Andraste, she needs him, too.

And it's enough.

Alistair lets her go.

Nighttime presses cool and calm against Bethany's shoulders, slipping down the collar of her dress as she weaves her way to her older sister's side. Things haven't been easy since… well, maybe they were never easy, and maybe Bethany's only now realizing that. Marian's face is pale in the spill of half-light from the Gallows' spires, her face scrubbed bare of paint and blood. There's no finery left: there is only Marian Hawke, and the death that hovers just over her shoulders.

Bethany settles down next to her older sister, extends her hands glittering blue-green. "Let me?"

"Maker, yes, why did I ever let you stop coming out with us," Marian says, sagging forwards into the healing with a weary sigh. Her hair is matted with sweat and other worse things, and a wave of fierce affection rolls through Bethany that's too big for words. "That's marvelous."

"You grew up, Mari," Bethany says. Healing magic comes easier than it used to. It spills out of her palms like dry sand through an hourglass. "And I got married."

"That was a terrible idea on both our parts," says Marian. An awful, queer little smile flickers across her face. "I am sorry, you know."

"Sorry? What for?"

"Carver."

"Oh," says Bethany. She blinks down at the soft-focus smudges of her hands, glittering pale against the dark metal spikes of the Champion of Kirkwall's armour. The gouged-out wound that the Deep Roads expedition had carved into the Hawke family is healed, now, mostly—not perfectly, not evenly, simply more scar tissue stitched into Bethany's soul—but then, Carver isn't down in the dark. He's just across the courtyard, speaking quietly to Alistair and Varric, and for all that he's wearing Warden silver-and-blue, he's still  _here_. Her twin, brooding and too tall and always in their older sister's shadow. "That."

"Yes,  _that_."

"Mari, I—you know it's not—"

"I know," Marian says, mouth quirking gentle around the words, but the cut-off still so sharp. "But I should have said it a long time ago, and I never did. I'm sorry, Bethy. I'm sorry I didn't bring him home."

"I don't blame you, and I'm not angry anymore," Bethany says, because truthfully, she doesn't. Mother did enough blaming for the both of them. Skin and musculature finishes knitting itself back together beneath her palms, and Bethany pulls her hands back into her space to fold them neatly in her lap. "Sometimes things just… happen, I suppose."

"This one shouldn't have," says Marian. "And you were."

"I was."

For a moment, the Hawke sisters sit next to one another and breathe, and it's like they're children again in Ferelden's wild Hinterlands; Marian with rings of blood crusted beneath her nose and a viciously triumphant grin, and Bethany glowing with the crackling remnants of used-up magic, trying to patch her up but not get caught in the doing.

Twenty years, and hardly anything has changed.

All they're missing is Carver.

The awful thing is that this is nothing new.

"Have you told him that?" Bethany asks. They don't have much time, especially not now that Marian's begun to stand, stretching herself up and out. Building herself up for a war. She  _cracks_  her neck, and it's the worst sound.

"Carver?" Marian says. "No."

"…Are you going to?"

It comes like a wave. Bethany's older sister's knee cracks sickly as she stands, and she looms in the darkness, bigger than the whole world. With eyes like ice and limbs like daggers, she rakes her hands through her hair, and the shift happens so easily that it's almost possible to miss. Marian Hawke slips behind the mask and disappears into the darkness of her own soul.

The Champion of Kirkwall grins with Bethany's older sister's mouth, grins with all of her teeth brilliant in the dark, grins like a demon might and doesn't look back.

"No," she says. "Never."

And then the templars come.

—

"Why don't they just drown us as infants?" the First Enchanter asks, bitterly. Not every First Enchanter is a Spirit Healer, but every First Enchanter knows basic healing, and First Enchanter Orsino's hands gleam with green-gold Creation, glimmering faintly though the dark. He bends over a prone body. "Why even bother with the illusion of hope?"

"You know why," Bethany says, very simply. She casts her gaze to where Anders and Neria are hiding in the shadows, cats' eyes blinking in the dark. Solona is somewhere in between, putting people back together, and that makes Bethany think of Ser Cullen. She still doesn't know what her cousin said to him, that day, but maybe it doesn't matter, now.

They're on opposite sides of this war, as perhaps they always have been.

First Enchanter Orsino cocks his head just a little, pausing to survey her up and down. "Really? Do I?"

"They need us," Bethany says. "Or they'd have nothing to control."

And she's right, and she knows she's right by the look on the First Enchanter's face. There is such a grief there, barely restrained by time and tide. Perhaps not restrained at all, and yet—

The First Enchanter looks to Anders and Neria, and breathes out slow.

(It is hard to ignore the stark resemblance between the two elves, when they are this close to one another. The shared cloud-white hair, the shared pale-green eyes, the shared sharp-cut line of the jaw. It is hard to pretend that there is no relation, when there so obviously is. When even the magic is the same, bruised purple-black and haunting. Hex magic, for the both of them.)

"I suppose you're right," the First Enchanter says, still staring at Neria through the night. Something passes between the two elves that Bethany can't name; family, or loss, or acceptance. "We must fight this."

The First Enchanter turns stiffly from the cluster of the Hawke family, sparks scattering like stars in his wake. Every footstep leaves a glowing impression, a path to follow, tracing tracks through the dust.

"Well,  _that_  was bracing," says Marian, lips pulling away from her teeth. "That one's going to get himself in trouble, if he's not careful."

"He's the First Enchanter for the Gallows, Hawke, he's in trouble by default."

"Unfortunate, truly," the Champion says, a faint thread of distaste colouring the words. She looks down at the dwarf at her elbow, crooks an eyebrow. "He won't be First Enchanter long, Varric, I don't think the Gallows are surviving this!"

"We always knew Kirkwall was gonna explode, eventually," Varric says solemnly. He puts his hand over his heart. "Farewell, Champion, we hardly knew ye."

Marian laughs like an orange burst of citrus, bright and clear, surprisingly sweet. She bumps Varric with her hip. "Where would I do without you?"

"Beating up templars in dark alleys?"

"Not incorrect!"

There is old familiarity in the banter. Bethany watches the way they jostle one another, Varric and Marian, the former all elbows and knees and violence in the mouth and the latter a carefully-constructed fallacy of wild tales and arrows out of dust. It feels like  _family_ , but not a family she's a part of. Her family is the babies and Mother and  _Alistair_ , and the truth of it aches between her teeth.

Bethany hadn't been lying, before: they've all grown up.

(Andraste, but she misses Carver. Andraste, but the missing is only an echo.)

She doesn't startle when an arm cold with heavy metal curls around her waist. Alistair settles himself around her, drops his chin to the top of her head.

"This is madness, isn't it," he observes, very casual. "This is what being mad is like."

Bethany makes a little sound, a choked-off gurgle halfways between mirth and hysteria. She turns just enough that she can look up at him and finds that he has the audacity to  _grin_  at her about it.

Her husband is  _ridiculous_.

"I think that's putting it lightly, Alistair," Bethany says, faintly. "My sister is involved."

"Your sister is always involved," he agrees, grave.

"Excuse me, I'm right here," Marian says, sour. She spares them both a look-over, sharp blue eyes cataloguing the way Alistair clings a little too close, and the way that Bethany lets him. The Champion of Kirkwall shakes her head. "We do have a job to do, if you two would like to quit getting your feelings everywhere and come join the rest of us?"

No one snaps anything back about  _feelings_ , if only because they'd all seen the desperation in the way that Marian had near thrown herself at Isabela, earlier.

Alistair grins into Bethany's hair. "D'you think we've touched a nerve?"

(It's such a little thing, a light in the dark. Oh, love.)

Bethany bites down on the smile, because it's not really the time. "Shush," she says. "The world's ending, don't you know?"

She thinks, idly, that they really are disgusting.

But it's not terrible to have one moment to breathe.

The world  _is_  ending, after all.

"—so we're gonna lie about that, right," Varric says, over the way First Enchanter Orsino helps one of the Circle mages into standing. The First Enchanter speaks fast and brutal and too low to hear, but Bethany recognizes the fervent intensity that comes from trying to save everything as can possibly be saved. "We're gonna lie our little faces off."

"Don't be outrageous, Varric," Marian says, tossing her head. "We're not  _lying_ , exactly, we're just… stretching the truth. He  _is_  going to disappear."

"I could make him a Harvester. That could be cool," Varric replies.

"Who would believe that? First Enchanter Orsino, a Harvester?" The Champion of Kirkwall pops her hip out, jerks her chin in Orsino's general direction. "Maker, look at him, he's going 'round helping people stand up. That's a creampuff, not a blood mage. How're you going to sell that?"

"Who's gonna believe  _any_  of this shit, Hawke? Honestly, who?"

"…You know, you make a good point."

Varric snickers, because he is terrible. "Exactly. So. Harvester, it is?"

"Harvester, it is."

"Isn't that a bit unnecessary?" Bethany asks. She wrinkles her face up, staring between her sister and her sister's dwarf. "It just seems—"

"Unrealistic," Alistair supplies, and doesn't much need to indicate the way that the First Enchanter is  _still_  carefully putting his Circle mages back together. They are all weary, to a one, and the carnage that surrounds them is hard to bear. His arm tightens around Bethany's shoulders, and she is painfully glad that Mother had the sense to hurry the children out of the estate and towards the relative safety of Lirene's shop in Lowtown. That place got their family through one invasion. What's another?

And Malcolm and Liana and Carina don't need to see this.

They're only  _children_.

"Better unrealistic and alive than realistic and hunted for it," Marian flutters her eyelashes. "Now, templar—"

"You can't call me that, I'm not a templar anymore," Alistair reminds her, very cheerfully for someone covered entirely in blood and running on fumes. A ripple of disquiet rolls across the courtyard; they all forget, sometimes, that Bethany's golden love

"You're the closest thing we've got, so get it together," Marian says. "Listen. Keep Bethy out of trouble. And kill anything that tries to kill her before it manages to do the job. And if—" she stops, exhales slowly. "And if, Maker forbid, if it comes down to it, you know what I expect you to do."

_Maker forbid, if it comes down to it, get her_ out _of here_.

"Hawke, you're breaking my heart," Varric says. "What about me? Do I, too, not deserve a rugged handsome templar to protect me?"

"Oh, darling, you have  _no_  idea," she laughs, but it doesn't reach her eyes, and Bethany watches the way her older sister leans down to drape herself all over Varric, the same half-despairing, half-fond quirk to her mouth that always manifests around the people she loves the most. Marian loops her arm around Varric's neck and holds on.

They may all die tonight, and even the Champion of Kirkwall knows it.

—

Bethany will not remember this fight, later.

She will not remember the way that Knight-Commander Meredith's eyes burn. She will not remember what it is like to worry about dying, because there will never be time to worry about dying. She will not remember leaving the Gallows. She will not remember the mad rush through that scorched white stone, nor the faces on the bodies left behind. She will not be able to recall the look on Ser Cullen's face, horror and broken-glass pain in equal measure.

She will not remember the gleam of the red lyrium.

Perhaps everything that came later would have been simpler if she could have. Perhaps the death would have been sacrament, all the pain like holy fire. But memory is an imperfect art. And fear is nothing but an exacerbation.

Linear memories do not settle, when one is afraid.

And so: Bethany will remember things in flashes, instead.

She will remember the fast panting press of Alistair's mouth to hers, the tiny prayer to the Maker that leaves him an unbidden thing. She will remember ash in the air. She will remember the hard line of her older sister's shoulders, the flash of dagger into skin, the explosion of crimson light. She will remember the solid wood of her stave beneath her fingertips. She will remember the shake of mana depletion.

She will remember the fear.

"We have to go," Alistair says. He catches her up in the rubble and the ruin of the Gallows courtyard, the giant weeping statues shattered around their feet to shining bits of bronze nothing. His gauntlets bite hard against her cheek. "Beth, love, come on, we have to go, we have to go  _now_ —"

"Alistair, I—the—"

"I know," he says. There is desperation clenched tight between his teeth. He touches her like a dying thing. "I know."

Bethany takes one, slow, long breath of air in to fortify herself, just in case. It's the last moment of clarity she'll have, and she loves him so much that it burns. She almost tips her head up to be kissed.

It's a shame. She can't quite reach.

And then they're running, and running, and  _running_ —

—

The aftermath is very quiet.

Isabela's ship sails out of the harbour soundless, just another oil slick on dark water. The black smear of smoke that rises from the Gallows blends into the sky, chiaroscuro over the brilliant pin-prickle of stars. The only sound is the  _slop_  of wave against hull and the quiet far-away cry of seabirds over the horizon; everyone is silent in the wake of the perpetrated violence, and Bethany's heart hasn't yet left her throat, all her knotted guts twisted gruesome.

But for the first time in half a decade, the entire extended Amell-Hawke clan is together.

The twins are boxed between Solona and Mother, the pair of them slumped over sideways in the silver-shadow splash of nighttime, the steady rise and fall of their little shoulders a painful comfort. Carver's at the prow with Fenris and Varric, his Warden armour glinting, and Bethany knows that he's going to have to leave because he was always going to leave, but her twin is here right now and she doesn't know how to ask him not to go.

Marian is with Isabela at the helm, and there's something fierce about the way that they touch one another, their hands entwined.

Bethany tucks herself into her husband's side with their son in her arms, and watches as Kirkwall burns.

"Well," Alistair says at last, blowing all the breath out of his lungs. "That was exceptionally terrible."

There's a streak of ash on his cheek. Bethany reaches up to wipe it away, lips twitching. Only Alistair. "I think that's a bit of an understatement, don't you?"

"Oh, I don't know, I do think it could have been much worse," Alistair murmurs, thoughtful. He shifts her just enough that she's pressed a little more securely into the cave of his chest, and Bethany can feel the panic that's stifled to silence there. It's in the too-fast beat of his heart, the way he clutches her just a smidge too hard. "Your sister could have decided the Knight-Commander had a point. Or we could have died!"

"But she didn't," Bethany says, gentle. "And we're fine."

"Mostly," says Alistair. In tandem they glance to the shadowed lee of the doorway down to the hold where Anders and Neria half-hide, the former hollow-eyed and quiet and the latter so fierce that the very air seems to tremble around her slim shoulders.

There is still something of the smoke and the burning to the pair of them.

(There is still some of the fear.)

"Mostly," Bethany agrees. She sets her face into the crook of his neck, exhales a hot puff of air shaky-soft into his skin.

Alistair, ever mindful of the small child tucked between them, leans down and presses his lips to her hair. "I'm very glad we didn't die."

"Me, too. I'm tired of running. We've done enough of that—didn't we leave Lothering?"

"Kirkwall. Less darkspawn, more religious madness," Alistair says very solemnly.

"That's not funny," Bethany says, but it is funny in the worst way, and she can't help the little roil of helplessly horrified laughter. Half-mindful of Malcolm in her arms, she presses her face into her husband's throat. "Alistair, stop, that's not funny!"

"It's a little funny," he says.

Unbidden, Bethany's gaze slides back to her daughters. The twins are quiet now, washed out in the leavening greys of fake dawn, shadow-shard and silver in turn with every dip of the ship into the water. Bethany stares at the pair of them for what feels like forever. Something goes tight and hot in her throat like tears or hysteria or the horrible aching loss of everything she's ever loved. Lothering, Kirkwall, the end of the world.

Here are her daughters, and they're still so  _young_.

Malcolm makes a sleepy-baby noise, his downy dark head tucked beneath Bethany's chin.

She swallows, and it feels like dying. Maker. Bethany doesn't have to say that the only thing that matters anymore is keeping their children safe. The chill of templar steel is as threatening as it ever was; Alistair's expression is wiped briefly clean in the half-light.

The templars had been his friends, and they'd still followed the Knight-Commander.

Maker knows, it is  _strange_  coming out of the end of the world in one piece.

"So… what now?" Bethany asks, a long time later. It's said so softly that Alistair has to crane his head down towards her to catch the words. She wonders what they look like.

Two halves of a strange, melancholy whole, perhaps.

"What now," Alistair echoes, less a question than something contemplated, held softly in his mouth. He cups his hand around her cheek, so achingly gentle. "We start over, I suppose."

"How?" she wants to know.

"I dunno," he says. He brushes wild curls away from her face. He's glass all the way down to the core of him, kindness and shaking in equal measure, and she knows, all of a sudden, that he's not wrong—they're going to have to start all over again, from the beginning. The faint glow of dawn on the horizon does nothing to mute the blaze in the harbour behind them.

Here is what is left:

The sun rising. of The Amell-Hawkes, sailing way. Alistair's arms around Bethany's waist, the acrid pollutant burn of saltrime, the shiver of wind off water. A family half-asleep in the rubble.

And Kirkwall, burning.

Morning breaks across the horizon in pale pinks and golds, streaking the Waking Sea sparkling.

"Alistair, look," Bethany murmurs. "The sun."

"Maker's breath, we survived," he breathes.

She looks up at him. Alistair is soft-lit in the wash of morning light, all crooked-brittle grin and golden hair, as lovely as he'd been that first day in the Chantry when he'd stopped to pet Dog and ruined every rule she'd ever set for herself. It feels so long ago, but she's looking at him and he's looking at her, and it's the only thing that matters. She moves in close to his side, thinking about all the places that they might go. And Maker knows that there's still a hundred things to talk about: Ser Cullen, Anders, the Chantry explosion. But Bethany's mother owns half the Wounded Coast, and the worst of the night is over now. All that gold, force-magic glittering. It's over.

"Yes," Bethany smiles. Takes his hand. "We did."

—

.

.

.

.

.

_fin_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> vomits.
> 
> leandra's gonna fight the divine, y'all. it's coming. thanks for sticking around. ♡


End file.
